The Midnight Train Podcast

85 - The Winchester Mansion (Sarah Winchester Was A Bad Ass!)

  Today's episode examines the life of an eccentric, possibly mentally ill woman and the incredible house she built. We‘ll talk about possible hauntings, impossible architecture and the delusion of a heart broken woman. We are discussing Sarah Winchester and what some less than creative people have dubbed The Winchester Mystery House!

      Her birth name was Sarah Lockwood Pardee. She was the fifth of seven children born to Leonard Pardee and Sarah Burns. There are no existing records or any other form of factual information to establish Sarah’s date of birth—even the year remains unknown. The scarce information that survives from the historical record indicates her birth must have occurred somewhere between 1835 and 1845.

 

At the time of Sarah’s birth, the Pardee’s were a respectable, upper middle class New Haven family. Her father Leonard was a joiner by trade whose shrewd sense of business found him moving up the ladder of polite society as a successful carriage manufacturer. Later, during the Civil War, he made a fortune supplying ambulances to the Union Army.

 

Young Sarah’s most distinguishing characteristic was that she was everything but ordinary. She was a child prodigy… a fire starter. Ok, no… By all accounts, she was also considered to be quite beautiful. By the age of twelve, Sarah was already fluent in the Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian languages. Furthermore, her knowledge of the classics (most notably Homer… no, not Simpson, and Shakespeare) along with a remarkable talent as a musician was well noticed. It is no wonder that New Haven Society would eventually dub her “The Belle of New Haven.”

 

In addition to Sarah’s brilliance and respectable place in society, there were several factors about New Haven that presented a unique influence on her upbringing. To begin, there was Yale University (originally known as Yale College). From its inception, Yale (and New Haven) was a hub of progressive, Freemasonic-Rosicrucian thinking and activity. By the way, we’ll most definitely be taking a train ride on the Freemasons. 

As a result, Sarah was raised and educated in an environment ripe with Freemasonic and Rosicrucian philosophy. Several of Sarah’s uncles and cousins were Freemasons. But more importantly, at an early age, she was admitted to Yale’s only female scholastic institution known as the “Young Ladies Collegiate Institute.” Two of the school’s most influential administrators and professors, Judson A. Root and his brother N.W. Taylor Root were both Rose Croix Freemasons. In addition to the liberal arts, the Roots set forth a strict curriculum consisting of the sciences and mathematics. Sounds super fucking boring.

 

Furthermore, two of Sarah’s schoolmates Susan and Rebecca Bacon were the daughters of New Haven’s highly respected Reverend Dr. Leonard Woolsey Bacon (no relation to Francis Bacon, who was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and as Lord Chancellor of England. His works are credited with developing the scientific method and remained influential through the scientific revolution, just in case you nerds were wondering.). While Sarah and the Bacon girls were attending the school, Dr. Bacon’s sister Delia, also a New Haven resident, attracted considerable fame and attention for writing her famous treatise that Sir Francis Bacon (with the aid of a circle of the finest literary minds of the Elizabethan-Jacobean Age) was the actual author, editor, and publisher of the original works of Shakespeare. Ah ha! See! 

Her work was sponsored by the author Nathaniel Hawthorne and was later supported by the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Mark Twain! Good ol Samuel Clemens. 

In addition to her writing, Delia Bacon gave numerous public lectures to the citizens of New Haven; thus, New Haven, Connecticut was the actual birthplace of the “Bacon is Shakespeare” doctrine. We’re here to learn ya, folks!

 

Given her direct exposure to the Baconian Doctrine, along with her passion for the Shakespearean works, it was inevitable that Sarah was drawn like an irresistible force to a more than passing interest in the new theorem. Moreover, the Baconian-Masonic preoccupation with secret encryption techniques using numbered cipher systems most certainly influenced young Sarah’s world view. This unique backdrop to Sarah’s early development played a crucial role which, in essence, defined what would become her life’s work. So much smarts!

 

As we’ll see, the Belle of New Haven became a staunch Baconian for the rest of her life. She just LOOOVED HER BACON! BLTs, Canadian bacon, pancetta… she loved it all! A completely strict diet of fucking bacon! Except turkey bacon. Fuck that fake shit. 

No, but seriously, She also acquired a vast and uncanny knowledge of Masonic-Rosicrucian ritual and symbolism… SSSYMBOLISM. Additionally, she gravitated to Theosophy. 

Theosophy is a religion established in the United States during the late nineteenth century. It was founded primarily by the Russian immigrant Helena Blavatsky and draws its teachings predominantly from Blavatsky's writings.

Author and historian Ralph Rambo (who actually knew Sarah and is a direct descendant of American bad ass and war hero John J Rambo) wrote “it is believed that Mrs. Winchester was a Theosophist.” Rambo didn’t elaborate on the matter, making him and his statement one of the more boring we’ve heard, but since he was close to Sarah he was certainly in a position to know some things about her. It should be noted that most Rosicrucians are theosophists.

 

Sarah adhered both to Bacon’s Kabbalistic theosophy, which is the eternal belief in the Mortal Kombat franchise no matter how bad their movies are… ok, that was stupid. Anyway, she was also super into the theosophical perspective held by Rudolph Steiner (1861- 1925). Steiner viewed the universe as a vast, living organism in which all things are likened to individually evolving units or cells that comprise a greater universal, synergistic body that is “ever building.” As we shall further see, the “ever building” theme was at the core of Sarah’s methodology.

 

William Wirt Winchester was born in Baltimore, MD on July 22, 1837. He was the only son of Oliver Fisher Winchester and Jane Ellen Hope. In keeping with a popular trend of the day, he was named after William Wirt, the highly popular and longest serving Attorney General of the United States .

 

Soon after William’s arrival, the Winchesters moved to New Haven where the enterprising Oliver, along with his partner John Davies, founded a successful clothing manufacturing company. Gradually, the Winchester patriarch amassed a considerable fortune. Later, Oliver channeled his efforts into a firearms manufacturing venture that eventually (1866) evolved into the famous Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Fuckin’ Winchester! Woo!!

 

According to historical documents, the Winchesters and the Pardees were well acquainted, particularly through the auspices of New Haven’s First Baptist Church. Additionally, Sarah Pardee and William’s sister Annie were classmates at the Young Ladies Collegiate Institute.

 

Not far away, William attended New Haven’s Collegiate and Commercial Institute—another arm of Yale College. Here, William’s teachers included N.W. Taylor Root (one of Sarah’s instructors) and Henry E. Pardee who was another of Sarah’s cousins. Thus, Young Sarah and William found themselves studying virtually the same curriculum under very similar circumstances. Moreover, like the Pardees, the Winchester family was not lacking in members who were Freemasons.

 

Sarah and William were married on September 30, 1862. Their only child, Annie Pardee Winchester came into the world on July 12, 1866. Unfortunately, due to an infantile decease known as Marasmus (a severe form of malnutrition due to the body’s inability to metabolize proteins), Annie died 40 days later.

 

In 1880, Ol Oliver Fisher Winchester died, leaving the succession of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company to his only son. One year later, William died of fucking Tuberculosis at the age of 43. Dammit, TB! The double loss of Annie and William was a staggering blow to Sarah. However, the loss did leave the widow Winchester with an inheritance of 20 million dollars (510 million today) plus nearly 50% of the Winchester Arms stock—which, in turn earned her approximately $1,000 dollars per day (25,000 today)  in royalties for the rest of her life—the result of which made her one of the wealthiest women in the world. Get it, girl! 

 

According to Ralph Rambo, john j rambo’s great great uncle, Sarah went on a three year world tour with her new band “Rifles and Posies”, who sold 3 million records worldwide and had a huge hit with their single “fuck tuberculosis” before settling in California in 1884. 

 

 “The New Haven Register,” dated 1886, lists Sarah as having been “removed to Europe.” No other information has survived to tell us exactly where Mrs. Winchester went during those years or what her activities consisted of. But we can project some well educated theories.

 

Although Freemasonry has traditionally barred women from its membership, there are numerous documented cases in which some head-strong women have gained admittance into liberal, Masonic Lodges as far back as the 18th Century. A movement in France called Co-Freemasonry, which allows for male and female membership was already underway when Sarah arrived in that country. Given her social status, a predilection towards Freemasonic tenets, and a mastery of the European languages, Sarah could easily have been admitted into any of the permissive French Masonic lodges.

 

Another possible scenario involving Mrs. Winchester’s activities while abroad could well have included visits to esoteric, architectural landmarks such as the French Cathedral of Chartres. Sarah’s Masonic-Rosicrucian interest in labyrinths would have drawn her to Chartres with its 11 circuit labyrinth, a puzzle-like feature that stresses the discipline of the initiatic tradition of the ancient mystery schools. Likewise, she would also have found inspiration in the Freemasonic symbolism and the mysterious structure (including a staircase that leads nowhere) of Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland .

 

In 1884, Sarah took up residence in the San Francisco Bay area—eventually moving inland to the Santa Clara Valley (now San Jose) to buy an eight room farmhouse from one Dr. Robert Caldwell. Her apparent motive for the move was to live in close proximity to her numerous Pardee relatives, most of whom had come to California during the 1849 Gold Rush, and were scattered from Sacramento to the Bay area.

 

One of these Pardee relatives, Enoch H. Pardee, had become a highly respected physician and politician while living in Oakland. Later his son George C. Pardee followed in his father’s footsteps rising to the office of Governor of California (1903- 1907.

 

It is interesting that Wikipedia makes particular note of Enoch Pardee having been “a prominent occultist.” Most likely the occult reference has to do with the fact that both Enoch and his son George were members of the highly secretive and mysterious ( California based) Bohemian Club which was an offshoot of Yale’s Skull and Bones Society. Moreover, Enoch and George were Knights Templar Freemasons.

 

Also interesting, is the fact that President Theodore Roosevelt (another member of the Bohemian Club) came to California in 1903 to ask Governor Pardee to run as his Vice Presidential candidate in the 1904 national election. The offer was turned down. During the same trip, Roosevelt attempted to visit Sarah Pardee Winchester. Again, Roosevelt’s offer was turned down. 

 

THE STORY BEHIND THE HOUSE 

 

       The story goes that after the death of her child and her husband she moved to California and bought the 8 room farmhouse and began building. It is said once construction started it was a continuous process. Workers in the area would work in shifts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  We're going to explore the stories about her mental state,  the construction of the house, and the reports of ghosts and spooky stuff. 

 

   The story supposedly starts like this: 

There was no plan – no official blueprints were drawn up, no architectural vision was created, and yet a once-unfinished house took shape on a sprawling lot in the heart of San Jose, California. Inside, staircases ascended through several levels before ending abruptly, doorways opened to blank walls, and corners rounded to dead ends.

 

The house was the brainchild of Sarah Winchester, heir by marriage to the Winchester firearms fortune, and since the project began in 1884 rumors have swirled about the construction, the inhabitants, and the seemingly endless maze that sits at 525 South Winchester Blvd.

Today, the house is known as the Winchester Mystery House, but at the time of its construction, it was simply Sarah Winchester’s House.

 

Newly in possession of a massive fortune and struggling with the loss of her husband and daughter, she sought the advice of a medium. She hoped, perhaps, to get advice from the beyond as to how to spend her fortune or what to do with her life.

 

Though the exact specifics remain between Sarah Winchester and her medium, the story goes that the medium was able to channel dearly departed William, who advised Sarah to leave her home in New Haven, Connecticut, and head west to California. As far as what to do with her money, William answered that too; she was to use the fortune to build a home for the spirits of those who had fallen victim to Winchester rifles, lest she be haunted by them for the rest of her life.

 

So there's that… Spirits from beyond told her to build!

 

After this is when she ended up in San Jose and purchased the farm house.

 

Winchester hired carpenters to work around the clock, expanding the small house into a seven-story mansion. The construction of the House was an “ever building” enterprise in which rotating shifts of workers labored 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. the House gradually mushroomed outward and upward,By the turn of the century, Sarah Winchester had her ghost house: an oddly laid out mansion, with seven stories, 161 rooms, 47 fireplaces, 10,000 panes of glass, two basements, three elevators, and a mysterious fun-house-like interior. It was built at a price tag of the $5 million dollars in 1923 or $71 million today. Due to the lack of a plan and the presence of an architect, the house was constructed haphazardly; rooms were added onto exterior walls resulting in windows overlooking other rooms. Multiple staircases would be added, all with different sized risers, giving each staircase a distorted look.

 

Gold and silver chandeliers hung from the ceilings above hand-inlaid parquet flooring. Dozens of artful stained-glass windows created by Tiffany & Co. dotted the walls, including some designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. One window, in particular, was intended to create a prismatic rainbow effect on the floor when light flowed through it – of course, the window ended up on an interior wall, and thus the effect was never achieved. Even more luxurious than the fixtures was the plumbing an electrical work. Rare for the time, the Winchester Mystery House boasted indoor plumbing, including coveted hot running water, and push-button gas lighting available throughout the home. Additionally, forced-air heating flowed throughout the house.

 

Adding further to the mysterious features, the prime numbers 7, 11, and 13 are repeatedly displayed in various ways throughout the House—the number 13 being most prominent. These numbers consistently show up in the number of windows in many of the rooms, or the number of stairs in the staircases, or the number of rails in the railings, or the number of panels in the floors and walls, or the number of lights in a chandelier, etc. Unquestionably, these three prime numbers were extremely important to Sarah.

 

In 1906 something happened that would change the landscape of california and the Winchester house. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). High-intensity shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon broke out in the city and lasted for several days. More than 3,000 people died. Over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed. The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States. The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history and high on the lists of American disasters. Although The impact of the earthquake on San Francisco was the most famous, the earthquake also inflicted considerable damage on several other cities. These include San Jose and Santa Rosa, the entire downtown of which was essentially destroyed. Since if the damage in San Jose was located at, you guessed it, the Winchester house. Standing 7 stories at the time, the house was damaged badly and the top three floors were essentially reduced and the house said at for stories from then on due to the damage. 

 

Aside from its immense size and Victorian style architecture, the House has a number of unique characteristics. To begin, it is undeniably a labyrinth. There are literally miles of maze-like corridors and twisting hallways, some of which have dead ends—forcing the traveler to turn around and back-up. There are also some centrally located passages and stairways that serve as shortcuts allowing a virtual leap from one side of the House to the other. Traversing the labyrinth is truly dizzying and disorienting to one’s sensibilities.

 

The House abounds in oddities and anomalous features. There are rooms within rooms. There is a staircase that leads nowhere, abruptly halting at the ceiling. In another place, there is a door which opens into a solid wall. Some of the House’s 47 chimneys have an overhead ceiling—while, in some places, there are skylights covered by a roof—and some skylights are covered by another skylight—and, in one place, there is a skylight built into the floor. There are tiny doors leading into large spaces, and large doors that lead into very small spaces. In another part of the House, a second story door opens outward to a sheer drop to the ground below. Moreover, upside-down pillars can be found all about the House. Many visitors to the Winchester mansion have justifiably compared its strange design to the work of the late Dutch artist M.C. Escher.

 

Practically a small town unto itself, the Winchester estate was virtually self sufficient with its own carpenter and plumber’s workshops along with an on-premise water and electrical supply, and a sewage drainage system.

 

On September 5, 1922, she died in her sleep of heart failure. A service was held in Palo Alto, California, and her remains lay at Alta Mesa Cemetery until they were transferred, along with those of her sister, to New Haven, Connecticut.  She was buried next to her husband and their infant child in Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut. She left a will written in thirteen sections, which she signed thirteen times. 

 

In accordance with her will Sarah had her entire estate divided up in generous portions to be distributed among a number of charities and those people who had faithfully spent years in her service. Her favorite niece and secretary, Marian Marriott, oversaw the removal and sale of all of Sarah’s furnishings and personal property. Roy Lieb, Mrs. Winchester’s attorney of many years, had been named in her will as executor to her estate. He sold the House to the people who, in 1933, preserved it as a “living” museum—today, it is known as the Winchester Mystery House also known as California Historical Landmark #868. Although no mention has ever surfaced as to any specific guidelines or special instructions by which Mr. Lieb would select a buyer for the property, one gets the distinct impression that Sarah wanted the House to stand intact and perpetually preserved… and so it does.

 

SOME OF THE FOLKLORE

 

Some of this stuff we've touched on already but here's a rundown of the folklore behind the house. 

 

Despite the fact that Sarah Winchester was extremely secretive about herself, nearly all of what the public thinks it knows about her reads like a mish-mash of gossip out “The National Enquirer.” some refer to this body of misinformation as “The Folklore.” Indeed, on a research visits to the Winchester Mystery House, a senior tour guide informed one writer that “in the old days, the tour guides were encouraged to make up stuff just to give some spice to the story.”

 

The Folklore about Sarah says that, after William’s death in 1881, the highly distraught Mrs. Winchester sought the advice of the then famous Boston medium Adam Coons. During a séance with Coons, Sarah was told that because of the many people who had been slain by the Winchester Rifle, she was cursed by the Winchester fortune. Coons further instructed Sarah that the angry spirits demanded that she move to California and build them a house.

 

Upon her arrival in California, Sarah began holding her own séances every midnight so that she could receive the next day’s building instructions from the spirits. Her séances allegedly involved the use of a Ouija board and planchette, and 13 various colored robes she would ritualistically wear each night (for the edification of the spirits) within the confines of her “Séance Room.”

 

To further appease the angry spirits, Mrs. Winchester made sure the construction of the House went on, nonstop, 24 / 7, 365 days a year for fear that should the building ever stop, she would die.

 

For some inexplicable reason, however, Mrs. Winchester took precautions in the building design so as to incorporate all of the strange features of the House to “confuse the evil spirits.” Moreover, she would ring her alarm bell every night at midnight to signal the spirits that it was séance time, and then again at 2:00 am, signaling the spirits that it was time to depart. Which begs the question “who was in charge of whom?” And, why would spirits’ have an inability or need to keep track of time?

 

Whenever people make mention of Sarah Winchester the typical response you get from people is “Oh yeah…wasn’t she the crazy lady who built that weird house because she was afraid the spirits would kill her?” Many of these people have never been to the Winchester House. Their source is usually television. “ America ’s Most Haunted Places” tops the list of TV shows that grossly reinforces the Folklore of the house.

 

The misinformation is further compounded by the “Haunted House” tour business thriving in San Jose as the commercial enterprise known as the “Winchester Mystery House” which profits by perpetuating the Folklore myth. In fairness to the management of the “WMH,” they try to present Mrs. Winchester in a positive light. However, their Halloween flashlight tours, along with booklets, postcards, coffee mugs and other sundry items being sold in the WMH souvenir shop displaying the title “The Mansion Designed By Spirits” only enhances the Folklore version of Sarah Winchester’s life. You’ve got to hand it to them, they’ve created a highly effective marketing strategy for a very lucrative commercial enterprise. These are good people who mean well—but this is hardly the legacy Sarah wanted to leave to posterity.  Even in more recent times the house keeps giving up secrets. In 2016, a secret attic was discovered. Inside the attic were a pump organ, a Victorian-era couch, a dress form, a sewing machine, and various paintings. There was a rumour that Sarah had a secrecy room full of undisplayed treasures and large amounts of cash, it was thought this attic may have been that room but there is no concrete proof of this. 

 

So these are the stories about Sarah Winchester and her house, now comes the sad news, most of what you think you know, and most of what you've just heard, are myths. Stories that have grown over the years about the woman and the house.

 

Early on we talked about president roosevelt trying to visit Sarah and the house. If you forgot, the story goes that Theodore Roosevelt attempted to visit Sarah at home in 1903, but was turned away. This is used as an example of her alleged weirdness. It is said the rumors likely started about Sarah because in life she was extremely private, refused to address gossip and did not engage much in the community.  This infamous presidential visit never occurred. Eyewitness accounts state that the President's carriage never stopped at the Winchester place. Furthermore, Winchester had rented a house near San Francisco that year to prepare for the wedding of her niece. She was not at home.

 

There is another myth that Sarah would spy on her employees. It is said that some employees believed Sarah could walk through walls and closed doors. The claims are that Sarah had elaborate spying features built into the house. There is no evidence she spied on her workers. Would a suspicious employer retain the same workers for decades? Would she name them in her will? Would she buy them homes? Would they name children after her? All these things happened. In short, there is no evidence that she ever spied on her employees.

 

Then there is the fascination with the number 13 and several other numbers. Since websites detail the occurrences of 13 in the house: 13 robe hooks in the seance room, 13 panes of glass in several windows, a stairway with 13 steps, just to name a few. These facts are used as evidence to prove the woman was ruled by superstition. References to the number 13 were added after Sarah's death, according to workers at the time. The 13 hooks were added not long ago. 

 

Then we have some of the crazy architecture. The story goes that she built crazy things like hallways to nowhere, stairs to nowhere, doors that lead to walls, and doors that lead to several story drops, to confuse spirits. Some websites make much of the architectural "oddities" of the house, such as doors and flights of stairs leading into walls, and how they were supposedly built to confuse vengeful ghosts. Some say there is a more natural explanation—the 1906 earthquake.  Research uncovered the fact that there was massive damage to the house in the trembler and that Sarah never fully repaired it. The stairs and doors that lead to "nowhere" are merely where damage has been sealed off or where landings have fallen away. After the earthquake she moved to another house. She did not want to make the necessary repairs—it had nothing to do with spirits. Not to mention she herself admitted that with her being the architect and having no formal training, things often did not go as planned. "I am constantly having to make an upheaval for some reason,” Winchester wrote to her sister-in-law in 1898. “For instance, my upper hall which leads to the sleeping apartment was rendered so unexpectedly dark by a little addition that after a number of people had missed their footing on the stairs I decided that safety demanded something to be done." Far from an exercise in spiritualism, Winchester’s labyrinth arose because she made mistakes — and had the disposable income to carry on making them. It didn’t help her reputation that she was naturally reserved. While most Bay Area millionaires were out in society, attending galas and loudly donating to charities, Winchester preferred a quiet life with the close family who occasionally lived with her. In the absence of her own voice, locals began to gossip.

 

One of the biggest myths however is the stories of how construction started and kept in going 24-7. There were actually many instances of Sarah sending workers away. Many times in the summer months she would send them away for a couple months because it got too hot. And in the winter she would send them away for a little break for everyone. This has been uncovered in Sarah's own writings. The Feb. 24, 1895 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article that almost single-handedly laid the foundation for the Winchester Mystery House legend.

"The sound of the hammer is never hushed,” it reported. “... The reason for it is in Mrs. Winchester's belief that when the house is entirely finished she will die."

 

So aside from appeasing spirits with the continued building this article states that she believes that if she ever finished the house that's when she would die, so that's why she kept building. 

 

"Whether she had discovered the secret of eternal youth and will live as long as the building material, saws and hammers last, or is doomed to disappointment as great as Ponce de Leon in his search for the fountain of life, is a question for time to solve,” the story concludes.

 

Some modern-day historians speculate one of the reasons Winchester kept building was because of the economic climate. By continuing construction, she was able to keep locals employed. In her unusual way, it was an act of kindness.

 

"She had a social conscience and she did try to give back," Winchester Mystery House historian Janan Boehme told the Los Angeles Times in 2017. "This house, in itself, was her biggest social work of all."

 

As far as all of the supernatural talk, most of it started after her death. The famed Winchester mansion fell into the hands of John H. Brown, a theme park worker who designed roller coasters.

 

One of his inventions, the Backety-Back coaster in Canada, killed a woman who was thrown from a car. After her death, the Browns moved to California. When the Winchester house went up for rent, Brown and his wife Mayme jumped at the chance and quickly began playing up the home’s strangeness.

 

Less than two years after Sarah Winchester’s death, newspapers were suddenly beginning to write about the mansion’s supernatural powers.

 

“The seance room, dedicated to the spirit world in which Mrs. Winchester had such faith, is magnificently done in heavy velvet of many colors,” the Healdsburg Tribune wrote in 1924. “... Here are hundreds of clothes hooks, upon which hang many costumes. Mrs. Winchester, it is said, believed that she could don any of these costumes and speak to the spirits of the characters of the area represented by the clothing.”

 

(It is worth noting here: There are no contemporary accounts of Winchester holding seances in the home, and “Ghostland” writes that the “seance room” was actually a gardener’s private quarters.)

 

The myth took hold, though, and the home, with its dead ends and tight turns, is easy to imagine as haunted. Although the spirits are fun, the ghosts shroud the real life of a fascinating, creative woman. Winchester was "as sane and clear headed a woman as I have ever known,” her lawyer Samuel Leib said after her death. “She had a better grasp of business and financial affairs than most men."

 

Speaking of supernatural, let's get into the haunted history. Dozens of psychics have visited the house over the years and most have come away convinced, or claim to be convinced, that spirits still wander the place. It was even named one of the “Most Haunted Places in the World” by Time magazine. Here are just a few tales, courtesy of Winchester tour manager Janan Boehme.

 

The Case of the Ghostly Handyman

 

Some of Sarah Winchester’s loyal workmen and house servants may still be looking after the place, according to sightings of figures or the “feeling of a presence” reported many times over the years, by tour guides and visitors alike. One frequent apparition is a man with jet-black hair believed to have been a former handyman. He’s been seen repairing the fireplace in the ballroom, or pushing an equally spectral wheelbarrow – if wheelbarrows indeed linger in the beyond — down a long, dark hallway.

 

The Secret of the Invisible Hand

Several years ago, a man working on one of the many restoration projects in the mansion started his day early in a section with several fireplaces, known as the Hall of Fires. The house was dead quiet before tours got underway, and he was working up on a ladder when he felt someone tap him on the back. He turned to ask what the person wanted. No one was there.

 

Reassuring himself he’d just imagined the sensation, he went back to his work, only to experience what felt like someone pushing against his back. That was enough. He hurried down the ladder, crossed the estate and started on another project, figuring that someone — or something — didn’t want him working in the Hall of Fires that day.

 

The Sign of the Heavy Sigh

A tour guide named Samantha recently led visitors to the room the Daisy Bedroom, where Sarah Winchester was trapped during the 1906 quake. Samantha was about to begin her spiel when a very clear “sigh” came from the small hallway outside the bedroom door. Thinking one of her guests had merely fallen behind, Samantha turned to call the person into the room but saw no one. Then, as her eyes adjusted to the darkened hallway, she did see something. The form of a small, dark person slowly emerged, gliding around a corner. Samantha quickly stepped around the corner and again saw nothing but heard yet another deep sigh. She felt sure it was the tiny form of Sarah Winchester herself, perhaps peeved to find people in her favorite bedroom.

 

You can find a surveillance video that seems to show a ghost or something moving around in a balcony late ate night on the fourth floor. Just as unexpected things turn up on video, the same is true of photographs. The Winchester Mystery House's own Public Relations Coordinator reports that he took several photos of the mansion in 2015. When he downloaded the photos he deleted what he didn't need. But, one caught his eye. In one window of the house, Tim O'Day spotted something. Was it a shadow? A reflection of a cloud? Or something else?

 

Visitors to the Winchester Mystery House also report taking photos with strange shapes in the windows. A few even shared their snapshots on Facebook. If you visit, study all photos carefully before hitting the delete button. You never know what you will find!

 

Top haunted house movies from ranker.com

 

https://www.ranker.com/list/the-best-haunted-house-movies/ranker-film?ref=collections_btm&l=367358&collectionId=2164

84 - Black Eyed Children

Ep. 84

Black Eyed

Children

 

In a snowy town, within the middle of nowhere of Vermont, an elderly couple heard the sound of three loud knocks on their door. They opened the door and saw two children, a boy and a girl. "Parents will be here soon, may we come in?" The children did not make eye contact and just stood there in the doorway. The elderly couple were hesitant but after a while, they let the boy and girl inside.

The kids settled on the couch while the wife made some hot cocoa and the husband asked them questions that went unanswered. The wife returned and noticed that her cat was scared and angry with the children. "May we please use the restroom?"

 

The wife looked at the kids and she finally saw them. The children's eyes were as black as a starless universe. She directed them to the bathroom and returned to her husband who was covering his face with his hand. "Did you see their eyes?" the husband then shows her his hand full of blood from a nosebleed. 

 

The power suddenly went out and the house turned as dark as the kids' eyes. The wife headed to the restroom and was confronted by the voice of the kids at the end of the hall uttering, "Our parents are here." The kids then exited the house leaving the door wide open. The wife then noticed that there were two men at the end of the driveway. The men were very tall and slender; the wife waved but did not receive the same friendly gesture. The two men and children then drove away together in one car.

 

The power then came back on a little later after the kids left. Throughout the next week, weird things happened in the house; three out of four cats went missing and the fourth had been found dead in the pool of its blood. The husband continued to have nosebleeds and finally went to the doctor, where he was diagnosed with very aggressive skin cancer.

 

That is one of the first stories to be related about today's subjects.  That story gained much attention in the paranormal circles and with alien enthusiasts. So exactly what are black eyed kids, Aliens, vampires, demonically possessed children, some other worldly entities? The black-eyed children are paranormal creatures that resemble children around the ages 6 to 16 who have pale skin and pitch black eyes and are completely soulless. Additionally, people who have been in close proximity to black eyed kids report a feeling of “unease” that washed over them. While nothing about the children’s appearance (aside from the eyes) genuinely frightened the people, they still reported feelings ranging from anxiety to terror at their presence.

Some people have also reported seeing black eyed kids that have “talons” for feet or other demonic attributes, but most sightings are of seemingly normal children.

Black eyed kids are also commonly described as wearing dated clothing or dressing in a manner that is not typical of a normal child of their age.

 

The strange thing about the black eyed children mythos is that it's a fairly recent phenomena.Some people claim that these children have existed since the 1980s, however, most sources say that the legend actually originated in 1996 by Brian Bethel, a journalist from Abilene Texas. The following is his account of his original encounter as he recalled it in the Abilene Reporter News:

  

       " Near as I can figure, this happened in 1996. I’ve managed to pin down the date that far. I feel like it happened in the spring or summer, since I remember wearing a pair of shorts, but one of my great regrets is not recording the actual date of the event.

 

After you hear the story, you’d think it would be something you’d never forget. But given enough time between, not the case. My memory, while good, isn’t quite eidetic.

 

I had gone down to the former site of Camalott Communications, one of the area’s original Internet providers, to pay my bill. At the time, Camalott was located on North 1st Street, near the movie theater, in the shadow of what is now Chase, then Bank One.

 

I was using the light of the theater’s marquee to write out my check, which I planned to put in Camalott’s night drop-slot. Involved in my work, I never heard them approach.

 

There was a knock on my driver’s side window. Two young boys, somewhere between nine to 12 years old and dressed in hooded pullovers, stood outside.

 

I cracked the window a bit, anticipating a spiel for money, but I was immediately gripped by an incomprehensible, soul-wracking fear. I had no idea why.

 

A conversation ensued between one boy, a somewhat suave, olive-skinned, curly-headed young man, and myself. The other, a redheaded, pale-skinned, freckled young man, stayed in the background.

 

The “spokesman,” as I’ve come to think of him, told me that he and his companion needed a ride. They wanted to see a movie, “Mortal Kombat,” but they had left their money at their mother’s house. Could I give them a ride?

 

Plausible enough. But all throughout this exchange, the irrational fear continued and grew. I had no reason to be frightened of these two boys, but I was. Terribly.

 

After a bit more conversation, I looked up at the theater marquee and down at the digital clock display in my car.

 

Mortal Kombat’s last show of the night had already started. By the time I could have driven the boys anywhere and back, it would practically have been over.

 

All the while, the spokesman uttered assurances:

 

It wouldn’t take long.

 

They were just two little kids.

 

They didn’t have a gun or anything.

 

The last part was a bit unnerving.

 

I noticed that my hand had strayed toward the lock on my door. I pulled it away, perhaps a bit too violently.

 

In the short time I had broken the gaze of the spokesman, something had changed, and my mind exploded in a vortex of all-consuming terror.

 

Both boys stared at me with coal-black eyes. The sort of eyes one sees these days on aliens or bargain-basement vampires on late night television. Soulless orbs like two great swathes of starless night.

 

I did what I feel any rational person would do. I full-on freaked out inside while trying to appear completely sane and calm.

 

I apologized to the kids. I made whatever excuses came to mind, all of them designed to get me the hell out of there. Fast. The aura of fear was now a palpable, black-hanging thing, almost as if reality itself was warping around me.

 

I wrapped my hand around the gearshift, threw the car into reverse and began to roll up the window, apologizing all the while.

 

My fear must have been evident. The boy in the back wore a look of confusion. The spokesman banged sharply on the window as I rolled it up. His words, full of anger, echo in my mind even today:

 

“We can’t come in unless you tell us it’s OK. Let us in!”

 

I drove out of the parking lot in blind fear, and I’m surprised I didn’t sideswipe a car or two along the way. I stole a quick look in my rearview mirror before peeling out into the night. The boys were gone. Even if they had run, I don’t believe there was a place they could have hidden from view that quickly."

 

This is widely considered to be the earliest written account of an encounter with the black eyed kids. Creepy for sure. 

 

There are many theories as to what black eyed kids actually are. One of the more interesting theories we've found is the following, it was listed as a psychic answer to what they are, it also involves religious overtones: 

 

          "Black-eyed Children are elementals called CHILDES. They are, & have always been, agents of God. In earlier periods, they wore the local costume or dress of human children. North & South of the equator, they now wear 19th century children's clothing: Dark-haired boy wears black velvet blazer & knee britches, wide lace-edged collar, lacy ruffles down front of white shirt, lacy sleeves. Girl wears white ankle-length satin dress with white sash at waist; a large white satin bow in her dark hair tilts to one side. Both are pale with dark circles around eyes. Distinctive giggling laughter as if playing a game together.

 

Children who ascend (cross over to become angels) like to serve as CHILDES. Serving briefly as elementals helps all angels move up the ranks of the angelic hierarchy. But their soul evolution is halted if they are used in a hex (curse or spell). RED EYES indicate a CHILDE who is caught in a curse & needs help "going home" to the Light (5th dimension or higher).

 

CHILDE have nothing to do with blood or vampirism. The VAMPIRE legend lumps two or three kinds of elementals together: The VIPER (its victims have two tiny bite marks like a Tazer gun), the BACHALU (bat-winged cat), & the BLESSED=BLOOD= a pale, caped humanoid elemental who can help humans by giving them a complete cleansing of all their blood (like a medical blood replacement/ transfusion by machine).

 

CHILDE participate in official hauntings. (See my other Comments re sick houses with DHEBRO, a.k.a. Hat Man.) CHILDE are also sent to deliver the Common Cold -- mild Cold symptoms... all the way up to intense fever & CHILLS=CHILDES.

 

Anyone who sees a CHILDE with RED EYES should ask Archangel Michael for protection."

 

Interesting….

 

So another theory was briefly mentioned in that last theory. There is a thought that black eyed kids are actually vampires! There are several reasons that people like this theory. First the kids seem to be a nighttime phenomena. Every story we've uncovered takes place at night and who comes out at night… Boom vampires. Couple that with the uneasy soulless looks and pale skin and you're on your way to a vampire. Another reason people think they could be vampires is the fact that they always ask permission to get into your house or car. If you are currently up on your vampire lore you know that vampires must be granted permission to enter your house. Now another twist on this theory is the psychic vampire theory. If you are not familiar with psychic vampires here a brief synopsis. A psychic vampire (or energy vampire) is a fictional and religious creature said to feed off the "life force" of other living creatures. The term can also be used to describe a person who gets increased energy around other people, but leaves those other people exhausted or "drained" of energy. Psychic vampires are represented in the occult beliefs of various cultures and in fiction. Some people believe that BEKs are actually psychic vampires due to many people feeling drained and tired after their experiences with them.

 

Another theory is that of demonic possession. As found in an article about signs of demonic possession The eyes play a big part in determining possession. Since the eyes are the window to the soul, physical changes can affect the eyes of the person in question also. 

Eye color (such as just the irises) can change to different but natural colors. Another way eyes can be a major sign of possession is when the entire eye itself becomes infected by black almost like a shark's eyes. Alterations in other physical colorings are possible through the changing of hair tones. Not only that another sign of possession is changes in the voice of the person affected. Many times in tales of BEKs the kids will have deeper than normal voices or voices of adults when they speak. In another article about possession it states Telepathic powers where the person in question knows what you are feeling or thinking without any indication from you can be a possible sign as well. Many people report that during an experience with BEKs they feel like the kids are using kind of mind control or telepathy to try and get the people to agree to let them into a house or car. Another thing that has led to the demonic possession theory involves the night time. As stated in the vampire theory, these stories always happen at night. According to many this starts online with demonic possession as the mind is most vulnerable at night therefore increasing possession activity leading to these encounters being at night. 

 

So we have weird elementals, vampires, and demonic children. What else could there be? Oh yes, aliens, of course, how could we forget.

 

This one's gonna be fun.

 

The theory here is that BEKs are actually humanoid alien hybrids. The hybrids are not really aliens, but a mixed breed between the greys and humans. They came about when the greys started doing gene DNA manipulation many years ago starting in at least biblical times supposedly to replenish their own thinning gene pool after centuries of over cloning. Another theory as to why the grays started cloning is more cynical, being that they started to place the alien hybrids into Earth's society to help them overthrow the Government and take over from the inside rather than a full-fledged attack. Some even speculate that many of the alien hybrids on Earth don't know that they are of mixed nature and are like terrorist cells that can, and will be activated when the time is right for the master alien races (The greys and the reptilians). Alien hybrids have different looks depending on how their DNA was mixed by the grays and for what purpose they are being used for. These are the possible known alien hybrids from abduction accounts from around the world. One of the main differences is the eyes. We're sure you're all well aware of what aliens look like supposedly. Especially the greys. They have big black eyes.  So the alien theory begins there. Some believe there are several classes of alien human hybrids. Some believe BEKs belong to one of these hybrid classes. They are the ones that are here on Earth and pose as humans. They are possibly everywhere and it can be impossible to tell them apart without DNA testing, and even then the grays do a great job of hiding the differences. They may be presidents, teachers, kings, the working class, or really anyone in power or not. They have been said to be put here for numerous reasons from research on humans and other life on Earth to control and the slow take over of the planet.

 

Some of the humanoid mixed breeds don't even know that they are a mixed alien breed and are being controlled without their knowledge. You can think of them as terrorist cells that will be activated when the time is right for invasion, the new world order, and the take over of Earth and its people. 

 

That's a lot to unpack… We get it… But essentially… Prior are staying that the BEKs are alien human hybrids, which if you remember back to the very first encounter we read…it definitely has that vibe.  The other thing that may tie into Aliens is that some believe there's a man in black connection. According to some, the description of the BEKs is astoundingly close to descriptions of the men in black. We couldn't find a ton of stuff on this theory, but again looking back to the first tale, the couple described the children's "parents" as two males and that both were very tall. 

 

There are of course the rational explanations as well. And while they aren't as fun, we suppose we should talk about them. One is that the first initial report by Brian Bethel is indeed fabricated and more of a creepy pasta type story generated for gaining attention. The rest of the stories are just the same and follow the pattern of evolving into urban legend status. Stemming from this there's the possibility that since people have actually seen BEKs but that they are just hoaxes. With the availability of contacts that make your whole eye black, it's not crazy to think there are people out there having fun at others' expense. 

 

There may also be a physical explanation by way of a condition known as aniridia. Aniridia is marked by partial or complete absence of the iris of the eye. Vision is preserved in some patients with mild cases of aniridia. This condition occurs when the iris fails to develop normally before birth in one or both eyes. Typically, aniridia can be seen from birth. Aniridia can occur as a single abnormality or can be one of many symptoms in an underlying condition. While aniridia did not make the entire eye black one could understand that encountering someone, especially a child, late at night with this condition could definitely give off some creepy vibes.

 

So now you know what they are and the theories behind them, how about a couple more creepy tales of BEKs to unsettle you the rest of the way. 

 

             "On March 17, 2008 I had my one and only encounter with a black eyed kid. Before my experience I had never heard of anything having to do with the black eyed kids. I was 12. I was sitting outside of a hairdressers in an old Chevy pickup waiting for my mom to get her hair cut. About 15 minutes had passed and I saw some kid walking back and forth along the sidewalk in front of my parked car. At first I thought I recognized him as one of my friends from school so I banged on the front windshield until he looked my way. It was not anyone I knew. At this point I was not scared at all. Not yet. The boy walked over to the side of my car and just stared. I think it will let me get a good look at his eyes. To freak me out. Let me tell you.. If you have never seen a black eyed kid.. you have no idea what to imagine. Pupils black as the night sky. The boy whispers “You must let me in” and then I locked the car doors and ducked down into the space below the seats. Five minutes later he was gone. When my mother got into the car she told me a boy with black eyes had come into the hairdressers had insisted for my mother to give him the keys to the car. She refused……thank God she did."

 

Well maybe they just wanted to play...or kill? Who knows!

 

      "Trick or treat?

This really freaked me out… Yesterday I noticed my neighbor hadn’t put out all his Halloween decorations/lights/etc. The past two years I’ve lived next to him he’s gone all out for Halloween. I don’t know him well, he’s younger, single, but I know he likes kids (not in a creepy way). His brother and sister-in-law and their kids are always visiting him and he plays with his three young nieces and nephews out in the yard. So anyway, I got home from work and was walking up my driveway and I saw him outside and said something like “Hey man, you better get your Halloween stuff up or that house up the street is going to beat you for best decorations.” He kind of smiles sheepishly and says that he’s actually going to keep his house dark this year and just put candy out. I asked if he was going out of town, but he said no, something happened last year that really scared him.

 

Now I was concerned for my own safety if some weirdos were coming around our neighborhood (which is a pretty safe neighborhood with tons of young families living here), so I asked him what happened. He said last year he had his brother’s family over so they could trick-or-treat in the neighborhood since they live in an apartment complex that doesn’t do much for Halloween. He had a bunch of kids come to the door like always. His family took off around 10:30 and there were only a few older trick-or-treaters, but by 11:30 they were pretty much done. So he was inside, watching TV and the doorbell rings. He grabs the candy bowl and heads over, noticing that it’s a little past midnight and that’s pretty rude for trick-or-treaters to still be out, but then notices he hasn’t turned off all his decoration lights yet, so his house is still a beacon. He swings the door open and is about to yell “BOO!” or something to freak them out, but stops dead when he sees the kids at the door.

 

He said one was probably around 13-14 and the other around 16-17 (both boys). They weren’t dressed up, but he remembers the older one was wearing a flannel checkered shirt. He was immediately overcome with uneasiness, like opening the door was a huge mistake. They just stared at him and he noticed they had really big irises and dilated pupils. He couldn’t even see the whites of their eyes, so he figured they were contact lenses. He was frozen there holding the candy bowl, like he couldn’t slam the door in their face as much as he wanted to. So he nervously tried to smile at them hoping they would “break character” and ask for candy or something. The younger one said they had gotten lost and needed to come in and use his phone. That was when he closed the door more than halfway on them and said “No, sorry” and the older one said something like “Can we just wait in your house until our parents come get us?” but by then he was convinced that his life was in danger and these kids must be high on something or intending to rob him and he just kept mumbling “No, sorry, goodnight” as he inched the door closed and locked it.

 

He told me he was so fucking scared at that point that they were going to try to break in through one of his windows or something, but he looked through the peephole and they had turned to leave. He watched TV with the volume really low so he could hear any sounds at all and he said he stayed up till like 5 am because he was too scared to go to bed and drop his guard. The whole time he’s telling me this I’m thinking oh my god, this sounds so familiar, just like the Black-eyed kids urban legend. Then I thought hey, maybe this dude is trying to scare me because after all, he does have the Halloween spirit…so I’m looking at him incredulously but trying not to seem too gullible. So I’m like “Man, that is really crazy, sounds like the Black-eye kids.” He just looks at me blankly, “The what, is that a movie or something?” and I said no, but told him to go look it up online.

 

Like an hour later I get a knock on my door (and admittedly, almost jump out of my skin thinking it’s a demon child). It was my neighbor and his eyes were freaking huge. He swears to me up and down that he had never heard of the BEKs before and it’s so similar to what happened to him. So we talked a while longer and I told him that quite a few people probably know about that urban legend and it’s possible it was just teenagers with black scleral contacts trying to freak people out on Halloween (which would be genius, by the way). But he said the fear he felt was so primal and came over him the second he opened the door for them.

 

Well… Happy Halloween to him I guess!

 

     A gas station attendant in northeast Louisiana had a terrifying encounter in November 2012. The gas station was creepy enough to begin with at 3 am, but then the power went out. Led by the light of his cell phone, the attendant was able to get the generators going, but the backup lighting was dim and only lit up certain areas, like the cash area and the parking lot, while the rest of the isolated establishment was cloaked in black. Out in that darkness, he noticed movement: three children on bikes were heading his way.

 

They stood at the door and stared at the attendant. He felt creeped out, but they were just kids and it was way too late for them to be out. He opened the door and asked if they were okay. The young girl asked to use a phone, but as he handed his cell over to her, he realized her eyes were all black. “No, I need the real one!” She pointed at the landline inside. The thought of letting her inside sent chills up his spine. He shouted at all of them to leave as he slammed and locked the door.

 

The children stood there a bit longer, silently staring at him through the glass with their solid black eyes. Then, they got back on their bikes and disappeared back into the darkness. The next morning, the attendant was eager to go through the surveillance footage. Unfortunately, the power outage cut the cameras off and they didn’t boot back up with the generator. He had nothing to prove the events of the night before took place

 

So there's a couple more stories. Are they real? That's for you to decide. I suppose the best way to end this episode is with words from the man who brought the BEKs to light for everyone. The following are the weeks of Brian Bethel about his experience :

 

            "I’ve never wanted the Reporter-News to be a venue for this story. It’s easy enough to find online, as I said. And call it a weakness, or maybe common sense, but I prefer to keep my encounters with the paranormal (ask me sometime about the ghost that haunted our newsroom back in college) separate from my award-winning journalism career.

 

But one of the provisions my bosses at the paper made in exchange for me potentially making a fool of myself on TV was for me to tell the story here. And so, I have.

 

Do I expect you to believe me blindly?

 

Of course not. I might not believe it myself if I heard such a story from someone else.

 

What did I see?

 

Your guess is literally as good as anyone’s. I’ve had everything from vampires to demons to ghosts to aliens to a somewhat-detailed hallucination posited as possibilities.

 

I do feel like I can say this with some authority: This was back in the day when freaky coal-black contacts weren’t widely available to a couple of kids in Abilene, Texas, for anything under a small fortune.

 

And there wasn’t enough time to even put such things on in the short time I broke the spokesman’s gaze, if they could afford them.

 

Will I ever know for certain what I saw?

 

Probably not.

 

Do I ever care to see them again?

 

Hell, no.

 

As much as I still don’t know about what happened that night and why, here’s one thing that I do know. It’s a gut feeling, but one that rises to a level of almost certainty.

 

If I had given the spokesman and his friend a ride on that long-ago evening, I don’t think I would be here to type this now.

 

End of story."

 

Whew… So there you have it. Blacked eyes kids! What do you all think? 

 

There seems to only be a couple movies specifically about black eyed kids, so we're going with the top movies involving evil children! 

 

Top movies involving evil children

 

https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=evil-child&ref_=kw_ref_typ&sort=user_rating,desc&mode=detail&page=1&title_type=movie&genres=Horror

 

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83 - The Cecil Hotel, LA California. (What Happened To Elisa Lam?)

Ep. 83

Cecil hotel/ Stay On Main Hotel

 

Welcome my friends to the first episode of 2021! We hope you all enjoyed our last episode of 2020, we did! We hope you all made it to the new year safe and sound. We're alive and well and we're going to take a much needed vacation. Where are we headed you may ask? Well we are going to head to sunny Los Angeles! Hopefully you passengers hang on and come with! Los Angeles, the city of angels, and tons of weird people and rich movie types that are better than we are...eh… Fuck em. We're not headed there for a tour of stars' homes, we're not headed there to further Jeff's acting career with casting couch auctions in some seedy office with a casting couch, no my friends were heading specifically to 640 south main street l.a. california! What sits at that address you may be wondering. Well it's none other than The Cecil hotel, aka The hotel Cecil, aka The Cecil, aka The stay On Main Hotel, aka whatever the fuck the next name is gonna be. That's right, the famous, or maybe infamous Cecil hotel. If this sounds familiar but you can't quite place it, well get to what's most recently made this place famous in a bit. But first buckle up cus here we go!

 

The Cecil was built in 1924 by hotelier William Banks Hanner with partners Charles L. Dix and Robert H. Schops. It was supposed to be a destination hotel for international businessmen and social elites. Designed by Loy Lester Smith in the Beaux Arts style, and constructed by W. W. Paden[7] the hotel cost $1.5 million to complete and boasted an opulent marble lobby with stained-glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary. The three hoteliers invested about $2.5 million knowing several other similar hotels had been constructed and opened in the area. They had the utmost confidence in their venture. Unfortunately for them, only a few years after opening the hotel disaster would strike. Not only would it strike the three hoteliers, but the nation as a whole. The country was plunged into the great depression. The Great Depression started in the United States after a major fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929, and became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929, (known as Black Tuesday). Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession.[4] Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II.

 

The Great Depression had devastating effects in both rich and poor countries. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade fell by more than 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 23% and in some countries rose as high as 33%

 

While this was happening the Hotel hung on as best it could to it's roots of being a destination for wealthy socialites, unfortunately those were heard to come by at that point. As the depression wore on, the area around the hotel became the infamous Skid Row. Now we're not talking the Sebastian bach fronted band that had so many great jams back in the day. To give you an idea of the area that the hotel was in and had to deal with while trying to keep clientele, here's a brief history: 

 

   At the end of the 19th century, a number of residential hotels opened in the area as it became home to a transient population of seasonal laborers.[13] By the 1930s, Skid Row was home to as many as 10,000 homeless people, alcoholics, and others on the margins of society.[12] It supported saloons, residential hotels, and social services, which drew people from the populations they served to congregate in the area.[14]

 

In June 1947, Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) chief Clemence B. Horrall ordered what he called a "blockade raid" of the whole Skid Row area. Over 350 people were arrested. Assistant Chief Joseph Reed, who claimed that "at least 50 percent of all the crime in Los Angeles originates in the Skid Row area," stated that there had been no "strong arm robberies" on Skid Row as late as one week after the raid. Long time residents, however, were skeptical that the changes would last.[15]

 

In 1956, the city of Los Angeles was in the midst of a program to "rehabilitate" Skid Row[16] through the clearance of decaying buildings.[17] The program was presented to property owners in the area as an economy measure. Gilbert Morris, then superintendent of building, said that at that point the provision of free social services to the approximately one square mile of Skid Row cost the city over $5 million per year as opposed to the city average of $110,000 per square mile annually.[16] The city used administrative hearings to compel the destruction of nuisance properties at the expense of the owner. By July 1960, the clearance program was said to be 87% complete in the Skid Row area.[17] With increased building codes during the '60s, owners of residential hotels found demolition to be more cost-effective than adhering to repairs. The total number of these buildings is estimated to have dropped from 15,000 to 7,500 over the following decade.[18] Many residents of the area found themselves homeless with the loss of half of the affordable housing provided by hotels.[18]

 

1970s through present Edit

Skid Row was established by city officials in 1976 as an unofficial "containment zone", where shelters and services for homeless people would be tolerated.[19]

 

During the 1970s, two Catholic Workers — Catherine Morris, a former nun, and her husband, Jeff Dietrich — founded the "Hippie Kitchen" in the back of a van. Over forty years later, in March 2019, aged 84 and 72, they remained active in their work feeding Skid Row residents.[20]

 

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, many veterans of the Vietnam War found themselves drawn to Skid Row, due to the services and missions already in place there, and feeling outcast from other areas. Like those after World War II, many of them ended up on the streets. It was around this time that the demographics of Skid Row shifted from predominantly white and elderly to those here today

 

Now that only takes us through the 70s but we can tell you, it didn't get any better after that.  The reason we went through a small history of Skid Row is to show how the area had changed and the type of people that inhabited the area. The reason to show this will become evident…. Right… about… Now!

 

By  the 50s the hotel had become a place known to house transients and drug dealers and many unsavory types. This would lead to a history of murder, suicide and other tragedy. That would ultimately lead to takes of the hotel being haunted. The hotel would more recently become the location of a story that would capture the attention of the world due to its strangeness. So without further ado let's get into the craziness!

 

Murders and murderers at the Cecil:

 

One of several noteworthy guests of the hotel was Elizabeth Short, who you may know as the “Black Dahlia” after her 1947 murder in Los Angeles.

 

She reportedly stayed at the hotel just before her mutilation, which remains unsolved. What connection her death may have had to the Cecil is not known, but what is known is that she was found on a street not far away on the morning of January 15 with her mouth carved ear to ear and her body cut in two. Some people say that this sorry of Short staying or being seen at the hotel are untrue but we like to think there's a connection, however we cannot confirm nor deny the validity of this claim and there is much conflicting reporting on this. There are some reports of sorry saying at a nearby hotel and just doing into the Cecil bar from time to time. 

 

Next up a confirmed and also unsolved murder at the Cecil. Georgina "pigeon" Goldie Osgood. On June 4th a 79 year old retired telemarketer named Goldie Osgood was found in her hotel room dead. The autopsy showed that she was beaten, stabbed and choked with a rag. Her hotel room was ransacked. Friends say they talked her merely minutes before her death.

 

She was known for feeding pigeons at a nearby park and that’s how she earned her nickname “Pigeon Goldie”. She was staying at the Cecil hotel, where she was very liked and was a long time residence.

 

Not much information can be found about her death. Only that a man named Jacques B. Ehlinger was arrested a few hours after her body was found. He had been seen walking in the same area Ms. Osgood would feed pigeons. He was covered in blood, but was later released due to lack of evidence.

 

Several serial killers have called the Cecil home as well. Chief among them… good ol Richard Ramirez, the fucking Night Stalker. Now if you're listening to this podcast and you don't know who Ramirez is, we question why you're here! But as a refresher: 

 

         Ramirez was a Satanist and a particularly awful human, even for a serial killer: He seemed to have no M.O. except to be as sadistic as possible.

His victims — men, women, children — were chosen randomly and killed in a variety of ways, with whatever weapon was handy, often after a sexual assault. Most reports suggest that he influenced as a teenager by his cousin Mike, a Green Beret who bragged of committing horrific acts in Vietnam, and who later shot his wife to death in front of Ramirez.

The Night Stalker was ultimately caught after a rape victim who’d been left alive got a look at his getaway car, a stolen Toyota that was found abandoned and connected to Ramirez by a single fingerprint. Once they had a suspect, police broadcast his name and face widely and Ramirez was recognized and beaten by a mob in East Los Angeles.

He was convicted in 1989 of 13 counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries, and sentenced to death. To which he said: “No big deal. Death always comes with the territory. I’ll see you in Disneyland.”

Ramirez spent the next 23 years on Death Row at San Quentin, but died of Lymphoma in 2013. He was 53.

 

“The Cecil and the Alexandria and the Twin Rosslyn hotels just become these giant coral reefs of the worst people in the world,” says Richard Schave, who runs Esotouric bus tours with his partner Kim Cooper, and makes the Cecil a featured stop on the “Hotel Horrors and Main Street Vice” package. “By 1990, the LAPD won’t go into [t hese places]. It was like, ‘If we’re called we’ll go in. But we’re not patrolling.’”

That’s how a guy like the Night Stalker could operate there. Ramirez would return to the Cecil after a killing and ditch his blood-soaked clothes in the dumpsters out back, then walk into the hotel either naked or maybe in his underwear, none of which would have raised an eyebrow since the Cecil in the 1980s, as Schave put t, “was total, unmitigated chaos.”

After all, that dumpster probably contained far worse things, and it wouldn’t have been weird to see a half-naked man wandering around a hotel renowned for vice and where the police rarely ventured. Drug dealers worked openly inside. The bodies of overdosed residents could linger in the hall for days. “No one wanted to be the person who called the cops,” Schave says.

 

Another serial killer was known to live at the Cecil. In 1991, six years after Ramirez was caught and sentenced to death, a 41-year-old Austrian journalist named Jack Unterweger checked into the Cecil while he worked on a story about crime in L.A. for an Austrian magazine. Unterweger used his reporting work to secure ride-alongs with LAPD vice cops and those trips were revealed as scouting missions when it was later discovered that Unterweger was also a serial killer with a penchant for strangling prostitutes. It is suspected (but was never proven) that he chose the Cecil because of its connection to Ramirez.

When Austrian police connected the strangulation deaths of three L.A. sex workers with a series of six unsolved murders back home — all of them prostitutes who’d been sexually assaulted and strangled with their own bras, using a distinct ligature — Unterweger fled and was arrested in Miami in February of 1992. Unterweger, it turns out, had started abusing prostitutes in his youth, and at age 24 he was convicted of strangling an 18-year-old German woman with her own bra, and sentenced to life in prison.

Behind bars, Unterweger had been a model inmate, publishing poems, plays, and an autobiography that became a movie and his popularity made him a cause célèbre in the European arts community, which began to lobby passionately for his release. In 1990, after serving 15 years, Unterweger was granted parole, and almost overnight became a popular TV host and journalist. Within a year, he was in California, killing women again.

In June 1994, an Austrian court convicted Unterweger of 11 murders and sentenced him to life with no chance of parole. That night, he killed himself in his cell — with a poetic twist. “He tied the ligature,” Schave said. “The signature ligature by which he killed all the prostitutes in Los Angeles and Vienna. That was his confession.”

 

So those are murders and murderers connected and possibly connected to the Cecil. But the tragedy doesn't end there. There are many other crazy deaths from the Cecil. Mostly all suicides. During the Great Depression. Tens of thousands of Americans took their own lives during the late 1930s, creating the highest-recorded level ever—more than 150 per one million annually in 1937 and 1938, and In the 30s the Cecil had its share of suicides. 

 

In 1931, a guest, W.K. Norton, 46, was found dead in his room after eating poison capsules. A week prior, he had checked into the Cecil under the name "James Willys" from Chicago.  This seems to be the earliest case of suicide at the Cecil. The following year, 25-year-old Benjamin Dodich was found by a maid in a room, dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In 1934, former Army Medical Corps sergeant Louis D. Borden was found with his throat slashed—he had written several notes about suicide while in the room including one that cited poor health as a reason for the suicide.

 

In 1937, the body of Grace E. Magro was discovered wrapped in the telephone wires around the hotel. She later died at the now-demolished Georgia Street Receiving Hospital. Police were unable to determine whether Magro's death was the result of an accident or suicide.  A year later, the body of 35-year-old US Marine Roy Thompson was found on the skylight of a nearby building after he also jumped from his room. He had been staying at the hotel for several weeks.  In 1939, Navy officer Erwin C. Neblett was found dead after ingesting poison; he was 39 years old.

 

Moving past the thirties we find more craziness and fuckery. 

 

    In January 1940, teacher Dorothy Sceiger, 45, ingested poison while staying at the Cecil and was reported by the Los Angeles Times to be "near death." No further reports were published about her condition.

 

    In 1944, one of the youngest victims at Cecil Hotel had their life taken from them. Dorothy Jean Purcell, 19 years old, was staying as a guest at the hotel when she threw her newborn son from a window. Purcell did not know she was pregnant and woke in the middle of the night with stomach pains when she was sleeping next to her partner, 38-year-old shoe salesman Ben Levine. Not wanting to wake Levine, she went to the bathroom and delivered the baby herself.

 

Purcell believed the boy was dead, and that’s when she got rid of the body from a great height. The lifeless baby was found on a roof adjacent to the building. Purcell was arrested, but after psychologists determined she was “mentally confused,” she was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity.

 

In November 1947, Robert Smith, 35, died after jumping from one of Cecil's seventh-floor windows.

 

On October 22, 1954, San Francisco stationery firm employee Helen Gurnee, 55, jumped from the window of her seventh-floor room and landed on top of Cecil's marquee. One week prior, she had registered at the hotel under the name "Margaret Brown."

 

On February 11, 1962, Julia Frances Moore, 50, jumped from the window of her eighth-floor room. We found the newspaper clipping announcing her death, it reads as follows: 

 

     "A woman leaped to her death from an eighth-floor window of the Cecil Hotel, 640 S Main St., early Sunday morning, her body landing on a second-floor roof in the light well of the building.

 

Police identified her from a hotel registration card and papers in her purse as Julia Frances Moore, about 50.

 

Det. Sgt. Paul LePage said the woman, who left no notes, had registered at the hotel on Wednesday. Her purse and a small over night bag were found in the room.

 

Although the purse contained only 59 cents, a bank book showed she had nearly c $1,800(around $15,000 today) in a Springfield (II.) bank. 

Sgt. LePage said he also found a bus ticket stub in dicating she had come here from St. Louis. Other papers I containing two home ad dresses in St. Louis were also found.

 

The officer said he would contact St. Louis police in a an effort to locate the woman's relatives."

 

Also in 1962, October to be exact, another strange death occurred. On October 12, two bodies were found dead on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. One of the bodies was that of Pauline Otton. She was staying on the 9th floor of the hotel. She was 27 years old and had just had an argument with her estranged husband Dewey. The other body was not that of Dewey. It was the body of 65 year old George Gianinni. Initially police suspected the pair jumped together. After some investigation however there found that Ol George has his haha on his pockets and his shoes were still on. They said that if he had jumped his shoes would have fallen off during the fall or when he landed, also who jumps with their hands in their pockets? Well turns out that after her argument Pauline decided it wasn't worth living any more and jumped from the window of her room on the 9th floor. George however was just walking by the hotel about to have the worst, and last, day off his life. Pauline jumped and landed on George as he strolled by killing him. 

Talk about your bad luck, no wonder some people think the place is cursed.

 

On December 20, 1975, a still-unidentified woman, approximately 23 years old, jumped from her twelfth-floor window onto the Cecil's second-floor roof. She had registered at the hotel on December 16 under the name "Alison Lowell" and was staying in room 327.

 

On September 1, 1992, a man was found deceased in the alley behind the Cecil. Authorities believe the decedent either fell from, jumped from, or was pushed from the hotel's fifteenth floor. At the time of his death, the decedent was five feet, nine inches tall and weighed around 185 pounds. He was wearing blue sweatpants and a black sweatshirt over a gray t-shirt. The Los Angeles County Coroner's Office placed the decedent's age at twenty to thirty-two years. The decedent's true identity has never been established.

 

On June 13, 2015, the body of a 28-year-old man was found outside the hotel. Some conjectured he may have committed suicide by jumping from the hotel, although a spokesperson for the county coroner informed the Los Angeles Times that the cause of death had not been determined.

 

Now in between those last two there was another incident. This incident is probably the most well known one. Thanks to the internet the incident spread fast and there is tons of discussion and speculation about what really happened. The official cause of death was listed as accidental drowning although most people don't by that. If you haven't figured it out already we are talking about the death of Elisa Lam. Wwe could probably do an entire episode on this story so we'll just give you the basics and maybe hit the story a little harder in a bonus for our patreon. 

 

 On Jan. 26, 2013, Elisa Lam arrived in LA. She had just come by Amtrak train from San Diego and was headed to Santa Cruz as part of her solo trip around the West Coast. The trip was supposed to be a getaway from her studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she was originally from.

 

Her family had been wary of her traveling by herself but the young student was determined to go at it alone. As a compromise, Lam made sure to check in with her parents every day of the trip to let them know that she was safe.

 

That’s why it struck her parents as unusual when they didn’t hear from their daughter on Jan. 31, the day she was scheduled to check out of her LA hotel, the Cecil. The Lams eventually contacted the Los Angeles Police Department. The police searched the premises of the Cecil but couldn’t find her.

 

Police soon released surveillance footage taken from the cameras at the Cecil Hotel on their website. This is where things took a turn into the truly bizarre.

 

The hotel video showed Elisa Lam in one of its elevators on the date of her disappearance acting rather strangely. In the pixelated footage, Lam can be seen stepping into the elevator and pushing all the floor buttons. She steps in and out of the elevator, poking her head out sideways toward the hotel’s hallways in between. She peers out of the elevator another few times before stepping out of the elevator entirely. The last minutes of the video show Lam standing by the left side of the door, moving her hands in random gestures. Nobody else was captured on the video, except Lam.

 

On Feb. 19, two weeks after the video was published by authorities, maintenance worker Santiago Lopez found Elisa Lam’s dead body floating in one of the hotel water tanks. Lopez made the discovery after responding to complaints from hotel patrons about low water pressure and a weird taste coming from the tap water.

 

According to a statement by the chief of the Los Angeles Fire Department, the tank in which Lam’s body was found had to be drained completely and then cut open from the side to remove her five-foot-four frame.

 

Nobody knows how Lam’s corpse — floating lifelessly next to the same clothes she wore in the surveillance video — ended up in the hotel’s water tank or who else might have been involved. Hotel staff told authorities that Lam was always seen by herself around the hotel premises.

 

At a nearby shop, eerily named The Last Bookstore, owner Katie Orphan was among the last to see Elisa Lam alive. Orphan remembered the college student buying books and music for her family back in Vancouver.

 

When the autopsy results for Lam’s case came out, it only served to ignite more questions. The toxicology report confirmed that Lam had consumed a number of medical drugs, likely to be medication for her bipolar disorder. But there were no indications of alcohol or illegal substances in her body. Soon after the toxicology report came out, amateur sleuths began poring over any information they could find in hopes of solving the mystery behind the death of Elisa Lam. One person noted that she seemed to not be taking her medicine previous to her death. It is an important finding to note given that the use of antidepressants to treat bipolar disorder can risk inducing manic side effects if done without caution. Some sleuths have understandably latched onto this detail and suggested it was a likely explanation behind Lam’s strange behavior in the elevator.

 

Hotel manager Amy Price’s statements in court strongly support this theory. During Lam’s stay at the Cecil Hotel, Price said that Lam was originally booked in a hostel-style shared room with others. However, complaints of “odd behavior” from Lam’s roommates forced Lam to be moved to a private room by herself.

 

David and Yinna Lam filed a wrongful death suit against the Cecil Hotel several months after their daughter’s death was uncovered. The Lams’ attorney stated that the hotel had a duty to “inspect and seek out hazards in the hotel that presented an unreasonable risk of danger to [Lam] and other hotel guests.”

 

The hotel fought back against the suit, filing a motion to dismiss it. The hotel’s lawyer argued that the hotel had no reason to think that someone would be able to get into one of their water tanks.

 

Based on court statements from the hotel’s maintenance staff, the hotel’s argument is not entirely far-fetched. Santiago Lopez, who was the first to find Lam’s body, described in detail how much effort he had to exert just to find her body.

 

Lopez said that he took the elevator to the 15th floor of the hotel before walking up the staircase to the roof. Then, he had to first turn off the rooftop alarm and climb up on the platform where the hotel’s four water tanks were located. Finally, he had to climb another ladder to get to the top of the main tank. Only after all that did he notice something unusual.

 

“I noticed the hatch to the main water tank was open and looked inside and saw an Asian woman lying face-up in the water approximately twelve inches from the top of the tank,” Lopez said, as reported by LAist. Lopez’s testimony suggested that it would have been difficult for Lam to make it to the top of the water tank on her own. At least, not without anyone noticing.

 

The hotel’s Chief Engineer Pedro Tovar also made it clear that it would be difficult for anyone to access the rooftop, where the hotel water tanks were located, without triggering the alarms. Only hotel employees would be able to deactivate the alarm properly. If it was triggered, the sound of the alarm would reach the front desk as well as the entire top two floors of the hotel.

 

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Howard Halm ruled that the death of Elisa Lam was “unforseeable” because it had happened in an area that guests were not allowed to access, so the lawsuit was dismissed.

 

All of the talk of the difficulty on even getting to the water tanks, especially the fact that no alarms were triggered only fueled more conspiracies and speculation. We may never know what really happened and it's another feather in the crazy creepy cap of the Cecil!

 

There are  stories of cold spots and shadowy figures. A news story went around a couple years ago of a ghost photograph, showing a shadowy figure outside of a window of the Cecil Hotel, looking like it was about to jump.

There are stories of people saying that they see a woman who looks like Elizabeth Short and feeling like they’re being watched in the hotel. It’s a creepy place even though there are renovations and rebranding (the Cecil Hotel was renamed the Stay on Main), but, well, it’s hard to shake the sort of stories of the Cecil. Also early in 2021 the discovery channel is kicking off it's streaming service with a new episode of everyone's favorite… Ghost Adventures… Those idiots are at it again.  

 

The hotel and the Elisa Lam footage was the inspiration for the Hotel season of American horror story. It was also the inspiration behind the movie Barton Fink starring John Goodman and Johnathan Turturro. 

 

The hotel can also be seen in two popular music videos. The streets have no name by U2, where the brand performs on the roof of a building next to the Cecil. And in Blink 182 video for The Rock Show. The band is shown throwing money off of a single story building next to the Cecil, which may or may not be the same building u2 played on… Probably was though.

 

Top hotel horror movies

https://www.ranker.com/list/best-horror-movies-about-hotels/ranker-film

82 - The Hatfields & McCoys' New Years Massacre

     This here episode marks the last episode of a very tumultuous year. At Least we gave you the super upbeat story of the Dozier School For Boys for your Christmas listening. This week we are going out with a bang! You may think you know the story, you probably know the names, you didn't know that Moody's wife is directly related to both families, and lastly you probably want us to get to the point. So here it is…. This week we celebrate the new year by talking about none other than the Hatfields and the McCoys...and the new years day massacre. 

 

       The patriarchs of each family during the majority of the feud were William Anderson Hatfield and Randolph McCoy.

 

Hatfield was born September 9, 1839, in western Virginia (now Logan, West Virginia), the son of Ephraim and Nancy (Vance) Hatfield. His nickname "Devil Anse" has a variety of supposed origins: it was given to him by his mother; by Randolph McCoy; earned from his bravery during battle in the American Civil War; or as contrast to his good-tempered cousin, Anderson "Preacher Anse" Hatfield.

A Southern sympathizer, Hatfield enlisted in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. He was commissioned a First Lieutenant of Cavalry in the Virginia State Line in 1862, a group made to protect the territory along the Kentucky-Virginia border where resident loyalties to the North and South were mixed. The Virginia State Line eventually disbanded in 1863 and Hatfield enlisted as a private in the newly formed 45th Battalion Virginia Infantry, before being appointed first lieutenant and later captain of Company B. His unit spent most of its time patrolling the border area against bushwhackers sympathetic to the Union as well as engaging in guerrilla warfare against Union soldiers. Devil Anse himself has been connected to battles and killings of several Union fighters, including trackers Ax and Fleming Hurley in 1863.

Devil Anse and his uncle Jim Vance later formed a Confederate guerrilla fighting unit called the "Logan Wildcats." One of the group's victims was Union General Bill France; killed in revenge for losing one of their members to France's unit.[ In 1865, he was suspected of having been involved in the murder of his rival Asa Harmon McCoy, who had fought for the Union Army and was waylaid by The Wildcats on his return home. Hatfield had been home ill at the time of the killing, which was probably committed at the instigation of his uncle, Jim Vance. This may have sparked the beginning of the notorious feud between the two families that claimed many lives on both sides.

Devil Anse was the patriarch leader during the Hatfield-McCoy feud. His family and Randolph McCoy's fought in one of the bloodiest and most well-known feuds in American history. He was instrumental during the execution of McCoy boys Tolbert, Pharmer and Bud, as well as being present during the Battle of Grapevine Creek before most of his sons and friends were arrested for the murder of the McCoys.

Hatfield was baptized on September 23, 1911 in Island Creek by William Dyke "Uncle Dyke" Garrett and converted to Christianity (he had maintained a largely agnostic or anti-institutional view of religion prior to this conversion). He went on to found a Church of Christ congregation in West Virginia. He was an uncle of the eventual Governor of West Virginia, and United States Senator, Henry D. Hatfield. 

 

       Randolph "Randall"(or sometimes Ol’ Ran’ll) McCoy grew up in the Tug River Valley, which marked the boundary between Kentucky and West Virginia. He was born on the Kentucky side of the valley, one of 13 children. There he learned to hunt and farm, two main ways people living in this part of Appalachia supported themselves. McCoy grew up in poverty. His father, Daniel, had little interest in work, so his mother, Margaret, had to struggle to care for, feed and clothe the family.

 

In 1849, McCoy married his first cousin, Sarah "Sally" McCoy. Sally inherited land from her father a few years after they married. They settled on this 300-acre spread in Pike County, Kentucky, where they had 16 children together.

 

 

During the Civil War, McCoy served as a soldier for the Confederacy. He may have even been a part of the same local militia as his later nemesis, William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield. 

 

The Family trees of these men are huge. There are many descendants around to this day. This also made keeping track of some of the issues tricky. Lots of people involved. First cousin marriage. Romeo and juliet type relationships between the families...crazy shit. 

 

 

       The Hatfield–McCoy feud, also described by journalists as the Hatfield–McCoy war, involved two rural American families of the West Virginia–Kentucky area along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River in the years 1863–1891. The McCoy family lived mostly on the Kentucky side of the Tug Fork; the Hatfields lived mostly on the West Virginia side. The majority of the Hatfields, although living in Mingo County (then part of Logan County) fought for the Confederacy in the American Civil War; most McCoys also fought for the Confederates, with the exception of Asa Harmon McCoy, who fought for the Union.  

 

 The Hatfields were more affluent than the McCoys and were well-connected politically. Anse's timbering operation was a source of wealth for his family, while the McCoys were more of a lower-middle-class family. Ole Ran'l owned a 300-acre farm. Both families had also been involved in the manufacturing and selling of illegal moonshine, a popular commodity at the time. The first event in the decades-long feud was the 1865 murder of Randolph’s brother, Asa Harmon McCoy, by the Logan Wildcats, a local militia group that counted Devil Anse and other Hatfields among its members. Many people—even members of his own family—regarded Asa Harmon, who had served in the Union Army during the American Civil War, as a traitor. At the time of his capture, he was recovering from a gunshot wound to the chest. During the early months of the Civil War, Asa joined a company of the Pike County Home Guards, under the command of Uriah Runyon, and it is thought he sustained the wound while serving in this unit. Asa's Company E was mustered out on December 24, 1864, in Ashland. He was killed near his home on January 7, 1865, just thirteen days after leaving the Union Army. A group of Confederate guerillas took credit for the killing and his wife's pension application states that he was "killed by Rebels". There are no existing records pertaining to his death and no warrants were issued in connection with the murder. McCoy family tradition points to James "Jim" Vance, an uncle of Anse and a member of a West Virginia Militia group, as the culprit. 

 

       Relations between the two families continued to sour over the next decade before flaring again over a seemingly small matter: a dispute over a single hog. In 1878 Randolph McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield, a cousin of Devil Anse, of stealing one of his pigs, a valuable commodity in the poor region. Floyd Hatfields’s trial took place in McCoy territory but was presided over by a cousin of Devil Anse. It hinged on the testimony of star witness Bill Staton, a McCoy relative married to a Hatfield. Staton testified in Floyd Hatfield’s favor, and the McCoys were infuriated when Floyd was cleared of the charges against him. Two years later, Staton was violently killed in a fracas with Sam and Paris McCoy, nephews of Randolph. Sam stood trial for the murder but was acquitted for self-defense reasons.

 

Within months of Staton’s murder, a heated affair of a different sort was set ablaze. At a local election day gathering in 1880, Johnse Hatfield, the 18-year-old son of Devil Anse, encountered Roseanna McCoy, Randolph’s daughter. According to accounts, Johnse and Roseanna hit it off, disappearing together for hours. Supposedly fearing retaliation from her family for mingling with the Hatfields, Roseanna stayed at the Hatfield residence for a period of time, drawing the ire of the McCoys.

 

Although they certainly shared a romance, it rapidly became clear that Johnse was not about to settle down with Roseanna. Several months later he abandoned the pregnant Roseanna and quickly moved on. In May 1881 he married Nancy McCoy, Roseanna’s cousin. According to the romanticized legend, Roseanna was heartbroken by these events and never recovered emotionally.

 

The real turning point in the feud, according to most historical accounts, occurred on another local election day in August 1882. Three of Randolph McCoy’s sons ended up in a violent dispute with two brothers of Devil Anse. The fight soon snowballed into chaos as one of the McCoy brothers stabbed Ellison Hatfield multiple times and then shot him in the back. Authorities soon apprehended the McCoys, but the Hatfields interceded, spiriting the men to Hatfield territory. After receiving word that Ellison had died, they bound the McCoys to some pawpaw bushes. Within minutes, they fired more than 50 shots, killing all three brothers.

 

Though the Hatfields might have felt their revenge was warranted, the law felt otherwise, quickly returning indictments against 20 men, including Devil Anse and his sons. Despite the charges, the Hatfields eluded arrest, leaving the McCoys boiling with anger about the murders and outraged that the Hatfields walked free. Their cause was taken up by Perry Cline, an attorney who was married to Martha McCoy, the widow of Randolph’s brother Asa Harmon. Years earlier Cline had lost a lawsuit against Devil Anse over the deed for thousands of acres of land, and many historians believe this left him looking for his own form of revenge. Using his political connections, Cline had the charges against the Hatfields reinstated. He announced rewards for the arrest of the Hatfields, including Devil Anse.

 

        The media started to report on the feud in 1887. In their accounts, the Hatfields were often portrayed as violent backwoods hillbillies who roamed the mountains stirring up violence. The sensationalist coverage planted the seed for the rivalry to become cemented in the American imagination. What had been a local story was becoming a national legend.

 

The Hatfields may or may not have been paying attention to these stories, but they were certainly paying attention to the bounty on their heads. In an effort to end the commotion once and for all, a group of the Hatfields and their supporters hatched a plan to attack Randolph McCoy and his family. This attack would become known as the New Year's Day Massacre. 

 

     Ever on the offensive, the Hatfields staged a sneak attack on the McCoy homestad. On New Year's Day 1888, they set fire to the McCoy home in what was eventually dubbed the New Year's Night Massacre. According to some accounts, the fire was set while the family was still in the house, asleep, as a means of forcing Randolph McCoy to come outside where a Hatfield ambush awaited him. As the flames grew, the Hatfields opened fire on the house. 

 

McCoy did come out, but managed to escape into the woods along with some children, who suffered frostbite. Other members of the McCoy clan weren't so lucky. Two of his children were killed during the blaze, and his wife was beaten so badly she was permanently disabled. With his house burning, Randolph and his remaining family members were able to escape to the woods; his children, unprepared for the elements, suffered frostbite. The remaining McCoys moved to Pikeville to escape the West Virginia raiding parties. 

 

During the 1888 New Year's Night Massacre, the Hatfields set fire to the McCoy homestead in hopes of flushing the family out in the open. During the mayhem, Randolph McCoy's wife, Sarah, was so badly beaten her skull was crushed. His son Calvin and daughter Alifair were killed in the crossfire

 

Sarah McCoy had never participated in the violence of the feud, so beating her almost to death served no purpose other than sending a message. And send a message it did – to the local authorities. Sarah McCoy's gruesome beating, and the murder of her children, brought about the murder trial that judicially ended the feud between the warring families. 

 

This incident led to the last great skirmish of the feud as tensions were at an all time high! After the murders and the burning of the house there was an outcry for the Hatfields to be brought to justice. This led to the battle of grapevine creek. On January 19 Devil Anse and a large party of his supporters faced off with Frank Phillips and his men in a large gun battle which entered local lore and the legend of the feud as the Battle of Grapevine Creek. Despite involving a large number of men, and despite being the single biggest engagement of the entire feud only two were killed in the battle, though a deputy who supported the Hatfields was executed by Phillips after the battle. Following the engagement Phillips withdrew to Kentucky, having succeeded in rounding up nine members of the Hatfield clan. Once there he learned that another Governor, E. Willis Wilson of West Virginia, had entered the fray, and at least to all appearances on the side of the Hatfields. Wilson demanded that the illegally taken prisoners be returned to West Virginia.

Wilson expressed outrage to both governor Buckner and to the federal government, sued the government of Kentucky for the illegal arrest of the nine prisoners being held there, and demanded reparations for the raids into his state. He also ordered the West Virginia Guard to mobilize and move units to the border with Kentucky to prevent further incursions into the state. In response, Buckner dispatched units of Kentucky’s guard to the border area as protection against retaliatory raids by either West Virginia troops or supporters of the Hatfields. Only two decades after the end of the Civil War the military assets of two states were facing each other over their shared border, as a result of the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Among the nine men taken to Kentucky to stand trial for the murder of Alifair McCoy and others was Valentine Hatfield, known as Wall and a man with some connections in the government of West Virginia. Through his ministrations, Governor Wilson demanded the return of the prisoners by arguing that they had been denied due process and had been illegally extradited by Kentucky. Kentucky argued that the prisoners were in custody, under indictment, and that the state had no obligation to release them to West Virginia or any other entity, regardless of the circumstances of their arrest. In April the case was appealed by Governor Wilson to the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

The Court issued no finding regarding the legality or illegality of the arrest, but agreed with Kentucky in their argument that no federal law existed which would prohibit the prisoners from being tried for the crimes committed in Kentucky, regardless of the nature of events which resulted with them being in custody. The finding was 7-2 in favor of Kentucky. With the nine men in custody pending trial the feud was effectively over, at least as pertains to violence against the other family. But several questions over the feud itself and the many participants arose in the aftermath of the arrests. Devil Anse was not among the prisoners, and neither West Virginia nor Kentucky authorities sought his arrest, despite his physical location being well known. Nor was Cap Hatfield in custody. One of the prisoners taken to Kentucky for trial was Valentine Hatfield, and at his trial he was convicted of involvement in the murders of the McCoy children and sentenced to life in prison. Wall Hatfield may not have been involved in the attack for which he was charged, in 2014 his great-grandson, an Episcopal priest, told the Bluefield (West Virginia) Daily Telegraph that family lore was that Wall surrendered voluntarily and that he hadn’t been guilty of the crime for which he had been charged. He also recounted a story of another relative visiting the Kentucky State Prison to review the records of his great-grandfather and learning of a different cause of death than that recorded by most historians.

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According to most accounts of the feud, once he was convicted Wall communicated with his brothers, asking for their assistance in getting him out of jail, but they refused over fears of being arrested. Wall died in prison under circumstances which remain officially unknown. According to his great-grandson, an official of the Kentucky prison system reviewed the records at the request of a relative of the Hatfields, and reported to her that he was placed in a cellblock alongside several convicted members of the McCoy clan, who killed Wall Hatfield in prison. The cause of death and the location of his grave were never released officially to the Hatfield family, who still question the nature of his role in the feud. 

    According to the accounts of several historians regarding the feud, Kentucky Special Officer Frank Phillips captured a deputy named Bill Dempsey who had been supporting the Hatfields, and executed him on the spot, an act of outright murder, though he was not held accountable for the crime. Other accounts have Phillips similarly executing Uncle Jim Vance rather than taking him into custody. Phillips referred to himself as “Bad Frank”, and claimed to have ridden at one time with the James-Younger Gang. Whether or not true, he did name one of his sons Jesse James Phillips, and he was indicted at various times in several jurisdictions. 

MORE ON THE FUED

Going back to Perry Cline, Whether Perry Cline instigated the feud, using Randolph McCoy and his family as a red flag to enrage Devil Anse, has been debated by many over the years. The story of Anse using the courts to deprive Cline of a significant section of valuable land has been cited as the motive for Cline to try to damage the Hatfield clan. Some writers and historians have laid the blame for the feud at the feet of Perry Cline, using his many instances of arousing the anger of the McCoy’s against the Hatfields as evidence that he manipulated the feud, and inflamed it during its several periods of near-dormancy. But other aspects of Cline’s character and his achievements in Pike County call this judgment into question in many ways.

There is little doubt that the McCoy family and their supporters suffered more deaths and the destruction of property over the course of the feud, and Randolph McCoy’s frustrations were elevated by his failures to obtain justice in the courts. Cline may have just been using his influence and political connections to help the McCoy family. Cline was well respected in Pike County and its environs; he started the first school for black children in the county and was elected to the state legislature, where he exhibited significant political skills. The theory that Cline incited the feud to get back at Devil Anse also falls flat when it is considered that Anse’s business remained intact and profitable in the feud’s aftermath, and if anything his influence in Logan County was enhanced.

One of the motivating factors for the Hatfield attack on Randolph McCoy’s home was the bounty placed on the heads of several members of the clan, including a $500 bounty on Devil Anse, the recognized leader of the Hatfield’s and their supporters. Anse has gone down in history as the undisputed leader of the West Virginia Hatfield clan, despite the fact that he was not arrested and was never tried for any of the multitude of violent crimes he supposedly directed. While some have ascribed his eluding prosecution to his political connections in West Virginia, it has been noted that his brother Wall held similar connections, which did not preclude him from being tried, convicted, and imprisoned in Kentucky, where he died.

 

Anse was never, except when attempting to outmaneuver Frank Phillips and his posse of vigilantes, on the run; his whereabouts were well-known to both members of the Hatfield clan and the McCoy faction attempting to bring him to justice. Court records also demonstrate that Anse was prone to using the courts, both in Logan County and in Pike County, to resolve differences, as indicated by the incident with the stolen hog. Nor was he present during the attack on the McCoy home. He was part of the murder of the three McCoy brothers following the murder of his own brother, an incident which much of the Tug Valley found to be justified. If he was in fact the leader of the Hatfield clan, as most accounts claim, he nonetheless escaped legal retribution, and attempts to exact justice upon him ended with the trial of the Hatfield’s in Kentucky.

 

Cap Hatfield was the second son of Devil Anse, a man known to have a violent streak and a quarrelsome nature throughout the Tug River region. Cap was the type of man who preferred fighting to discussion and believed that vengeance was a duty of the offended. Cap was one of many of the feud’s participants of which there are conflicting accounts, some say he was arrested by Frank Phillips on the same day that the latter killed Uncle Jim Vance, others recount that he escaped Phillips on that day. At one point he was in the Logan County (later Mingo County) Jail, from which he reportedly escaped and eluded justice, probably with the help of his father. Cap was never brought to justice.

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During the trial which led to the sentencing of Ellison Mounts to death, eyewitness testimony from Randolph McCoy was that it was Cap Hatfield who had killed Alifair McCoy, testimony which conflicted with the confession offered by Mounts. As Cap frequently sided with his mentor, Jim Vance, who consistently recommended violent solutions to perceived slights, it seems likely that he was present during the attack, probably leading it along with his uncle. Cap escaped the feud and the pursuit of the vigilantes and vanished. In 1930, he died at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, one of the last survivors of the feud. His death was described in the New York Times as being the result of a brain ailment.

James Vance was well-known in both Logan and Pike Counties, referred to as Crazy Jim Vance by the McCoy family and as Uncle Jim Vance to the Hatfield clan. The McCoys liked to point out that his father, Abner Vance, had been hanged and had never been married to Jim’s mother. A guerrilla fighter in Logan and Pike Counties during the Civil War, Vance was widely believed to have been the killer of Asa Harmon McCoy in 1865. Vance was accused by the McCoy’s of being the leader of the assault on the McCoy home during the New Year’s attack, and there was testimony that it was he who had severely beaten Sarah McCoy with a rifle butt as she attempted to reach her wounded daughter.

Vance has been portrayed down the years as a psychopathic killer, one of the leading proponents of the violence which marked the feud. Following his death and the disappearance of Cap Hatfield, the violence of the feud subsided, despite Devil Anse, the presumed leader of the Hatfield clan, remaining at large. Some historians believe that Cap Hatfield witnessed the execution of the wounded Jim Vance at the hands of Frank Phillips, which led to Cap’s decision to flee the region. Despite his criminal history, Vance at one point served as a constable, though many of the Hatfield’s did so in Logan County, despite being considered outlaws in Pike County, so Vance’s service with the law cannot be a consideration when evaluating his true character.

    Throughout the twentieth century, the Hatfield and McCoy feud grew in legend. It became sensationalized in newspapers and magazines, fictionalized in periodicals and film, satirized in vaudeville, and trivialized in cartoons and comics. Portions of the feud were presented as romantic drama, as in the film Roseanna McCoy, released in 1949, which approached the feud from the perspective of star-crossed lovers of the Romeo and Juliet type. Mark Twain was one of the first to use the feud as a basis for one of his tales, describing the feud between the Grangerfords and the Sheperdsons in his novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Even Betty Boop appeared in the cartoon with a feud as a backdrop.

On June 14, 2003, in Pikeville, Kentucky, the McCoy cousins partnered with Reo Hatfield of Waynesboro, Virginia, to declare an official truce between the families. Reo Hatfield said that he wanted to show that if the two families could reach an accord, others could also. He had said that he wanted to send a broader message to the world that when national security is at risk, Americans put their differences aside and stand united: "We're not saying you don't have to fight because sometimes you do have to fight," he said. "But you don't have to fight forever." Signed by more than sixty descendants during the fourth Hatfield–McCoy Festival, the truce was touted as a proclamation of peace, saying "We ask by God's grace and love that we be forever remembered as those that bound together the hearts of two families to form a family of freedom in America." Governor Paul E. Patton of Kentucky and Governor Bob Wise of West Virginia signed proclamations declaring June 14 Hatfield and McCoy Reconciliation Day. Ron McCoy, one of the festival's founders, said it is unknown where the three signed proclamations will be exhibited and that "the Hatfields and McCoys symbolize violence and feuding and fighting, but by signing this, hopefully people will realize that's not the final chapter.

the Hatfield and McCoy Reunion Festival and Marathon are held annually in June on a three-day weekend. The events take place in Pikeville, Kentucky, Matewan, West Virginia, and Williamson, West Virginia. The festival commemorates the famed feud and includes a marathon and half-marathon (the motto is "no feudin', just runnin'"), in addition to an ATV ride in all three towns. There is also a tug-of-war across the Tug Fork tributary near which the feuding families lived, a live re-enactment of scenes from their most famous fight, a motorcycle ride, live entertainment, Hatfield–McCoy landmark tours, a cornbread contest, pancake breakfast, arts, crafts, and dancing. Launched in 2000, the festival typically attracts thousands with more than 300 runners taking part in the races.[29]

Statue honoring Randolph McCoy at the McCoy Homeplace in Hardy, KY

In August 2015 members of both families helped archeologists dig for ruins at a site where they believe Randolph McCoy's house was burned

In September 2018, a wooden statue, standing over 8 feet tall, was erected in honor of Randolph McCoy at the McCoy homeplace in Hardy, Kentucky. Carved by chainsaw carver Travis Williams and donated to the property, this statue had been commissioned by McCoy property owner and Hatfield descendant Bob Scott. The statue was unveiled during Hatfield-McCoy Heritage Days in Pike County, Kentucky, an event that occurs every September that brings Hatfield and McCoy descendants back to Pike County to celebrate the long-standing peace between the families. The McCoy homeplace, like many others associated with the feud, is open to tourists year-round

 

Top horror movies set in kentucky...there is only 4 apparently…

Films set in Kentucky - IMDb

 

Horror movies set in west virginia

Films set in West Virginia - IMDb

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81 - Dozier School For Boys (WTF!)

Ep. 81

Dozier school for boys

On our train ride today we are heading to sunny Florida. This is much more than a "Florida man" story. This is a crazy story of one of the worst boys schools ever to exist. There were many of these return schools around the country but this place has a reputation as one of the worst. It's been known by several names over the years but most people know it as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys . We're gonna talk about the history and atrocities that happened at this school that opened January 1, 1900 and just closed on June 30, 2011. A 111 year reign of terror! Here we go!

 

The school was located in Marianna Florida and covered 1400 acres. A second campus was opened in the town of Okeechobee in 1955.  The school was first organized under an 1897 act of the legislature and began operations on the Marianna campus on January 1, 1900, as the Florida State Reform School. It was overseen by five commissioners appointed by the governor William Dunnington Bloxham, who were to operate the school and make biennial reports to the legislature. Some time thereafter, the commissioners were replaced by the governor and cabinet of Florida, acting as the Board of Commissioners of State Institutions. In 1914, the name was changed to the Florida Industrial School for Boys and in 1957 to the Florida School for Boys. In 1955, the Okeechobee campus opened. In 1967, the name of the Marianna campus was changed to the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, in honor of a former superintendent of the school.The Marianna site was originally divided into north and south sides. South side was known as "Number 1" and was for white students only, while the North side was"number 2" and for black students only. The school remained segregated until 1966. Boot Hill cemetery was located on the north side. In 1929, an 11-room concrete block detention building, also containing two cells (one for white, and one for black students), was constructed to house incorrigible or violent students, the site at the time not being fenced. Students called it "The White House".  In the 1950s and 1960s, it was the site of most beatings of students. After corporal punishment at the school was abolished in 1967, the building was used for storage. Shortly before the facility was closed, Dozier was a fenced, 159-acre "high-risk" residential facility for 104 boys aged 13 to 21 who had been committed there by a court; their average length of stay at Dozier was nine to twelve months. They lived in several cottages, with each boy having an unlocked room.

 

In 1903 an inspection uncovered that children at the school were commonly kept in leg irons. After this the school was investigated 6 times in its first 13 years. In 1914 there was a fire in one of the dorms. The fire killed six students and two staff members.  During the spanish flu epidemic in 1918 it was recorded that eleven students died but they were not named and documented in the recorded burials of the Boot Hill Cemetery. A 13 year old boy was sent there in 1934 and died 38 days later. There's no record of what caused his death. In 1968, Florida Governor Claude Kirk said, after a visit to the school where he found overcrowding and poor conditions, that "somebody should have blown the whistle a long time ago." At this time, the school housed 564 boys, some for offenses as minor as school truancy, running away from home, or "incorrigibility", including cigarette smoking. They ranged in age from ten to sixteen years old. The White House was closed in 1967. Officially, corporal punishment at the school was banned in August 1968.

 

In 1969, as part of a governmental reorganization, the school came under the management of the Division of Youth Services of the newly created Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. There were 81 school-related deaths of students from 1911 to 1973. Thirty-one of these boys were said to be buried on the school grounds, with other bodies "shipped home to families or buried in unknown locations." There are 31 simple crosses as grave markers at the cemetery, installed in the 1960s and 1990s, but they have been found not to correspond to specific burials.

 

An inspection done in 1982 revealed that boys were hogtied and kept in isolation for weeks at a time! A lawsuit was filed by the ACLU over this issue and several other issues at this facility and three other juvenile facilities in Florida. At this point the school was housing 105 students aged 13-21. In 1985, the media reported that young ex-students of the school, sentenced to jail terms for crimes committed at Dozier, had subsequently been the victims of torture by guards at the Jackson County jail. The teens were usually hanged but handcuffs to the bars of their cells usually for an hour at a time. The guards said that this practice was approved by their superiors.

 

In 1994, the school was placed under the management of the newly created Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, which operated the school until its closure in 2011. By this time, the school had facilities to house 135 inmates. Many of the boys sent there had been convicted of rape or of committing "lewd acts on other children". On September 16, 1998, a resident of the school lost his right arm in a washing machine. A lawsuit was filed against the institution and the plaintiff was awarded an undisclosed amount in 2003.

 

In April 2007, the acting superintendent of the school and one other employee were fired following allegations of abuse of inmates.[24] The state officially acknowledged that abuses had taken place there; the White House Boys, a growing group of adult survivors who had been held there in the 1950s and 1960s, were speaking out to the press. In October 2008, several of them attended a ceremony to install a historic plaque at the White House that acknowledged that past. The news was carried nationwide.[14]

 

In late 2009, the school failed its annual inspection. Among other problems, the inspection found that the school failed to deal properly with the numerous complaints by the boys held there, including allegations of continued mistreatment by the guards. State Representative Darryl Rouson said the system was struggling to move on from a longstanding "culture of violence and abuse".[16]

 

The U.S. Department of Justice conducted a survey of 195 US facilities, including the Florida School For Boys. According to its 2010 report, 11.3% of boys surveyed at the school reported that they had been subject to sexual abuse by staff using force in the last twelve months, and 10.3% reported that they had been subject to it without the use of force. 2.2% reported sexual victimization by another inmate. DOJ said these percentages meant the home was deemed to have neither "high" nor "low" rates of sexual victimization compared with the other institutions assessed in the survey.[25]

 

In July 2010, the state announced its plan to merge Dozier with JJOC, creating a single new facility, the North Florida Youth Development Center, with an open campus and a closed campus. However, the following year, claiming "budgetary limitations," the state decided to close both facilities on June 30, 2011. Remaining students were sent to other juvenile justice facilities around the state.[4]

 

After Hurricane Michael, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office was given the property, now known as ‘Endeavor’, to relocate from their damaged offices.

 

So there you have a condensed history of the school and the site. Now we're going to get into the crazy shit that went on there. First we have the story of Willy Haynes and his experience with the school and the infamous Whitehouse. The story comes from an incredible article from the Tampa Bay Times. In the late 1950s, a 13-year-old kid who slicked back his long hair like Elvis stood in front of a judge in Tampa. A car had been stolen from the neighborhood. Someone said they saw Willy Haynes driving it. Willy didn't know how to drive, but the judge didn't know that. Here was a boy who grew up in a little house off Columbus Avenue, in Six Mile Creek, a scrappy neighborhood on Tampa's eastern edge, where a poor kid learned early how to protect himself. When the judge warned the boy to behave or he'd be sent to reform school in Marianna, Willy surprised the court.

 

Why can't I go now?

 

He had heard the Florida School for Boys had a band and a football team and maybe even Boy Scouts, and it didn't cost a penny to participate. He kissed his mother goodbye at the courthouse and left Tampa in the back of a state cruiser. Big, beautiful, oblivious Florida blurred by outside the window. Willy wasn't scared as the state car pulled onto the gravel road that led to the state's only boys' juvenile reformatory, the Florida School for Boys.

 

No fences. Manicured lawns. Tall pines and stately buildings. It looked like college. It had to be better than home.

 

Inside, he signed a ledger.

 

William Haynes Jr.

 

April 11, 1958.

 

A boy escorted Willy Haynes to Tyler Cottage and told him to keep his belongings in Locker No. 252. He was given a toothbrush and pajamas and his own military bunk. The poor kid from Tampa felt like he was finally home.

 

He was there barely a week when it happened. Some bullies caught him outside the showers, and the next thing he knew he was in the middle of a tangle of feet and fists. Willy knew how to fight, and he was choking one of his attackers in a headlock when a cottage father busted in.

 

The school's disciplinarian, R.W. Hatton, asked Willy who he had been fighting, but the boy would not give up the names. Better to be punished than be branded a puke.

 

You're going down, Hatton told him.

 

They dragged him across that manicured campus, toward the squat concrete building called the White House. They dragged him through the door. Willy Haynes, who had asked the judge to send him here, who had wanted to throw a football under the pines. Over 18 months, the men dragged Willy into the White House again and again.

 

Lay down. Hold the rail. Don't make a sound.

 

He could hear the strap coming. It started with the pivot, the shuffle of boots on concrete. The strap hit the wall, then the ceiling, then thighs and buttocks and back, and it felt like an explosion. When he got back to the cottage, Willy stood in the shower and let the cold water wash bits of underwear from his lacerations, as his blood ran toward the drain.  

 

Many others suffered the same horrors as Willy. As the boys grew up the memories stayed with them as they became men. Many sporting both physical and mental scars. Some of these men gathered at the Florida School for Boys on Oct. 21, 2008. Again from the Tampa Bay Times article:

 

       "The last time they had stepped on this sprawling campus, they were fresh-faced punks with the world before them. Now their hair was gray and their faces sagged. Their backs ached from a night in motel beds. They carried pictures of children and grandchildren in their wallets.

 

Dick Colon had flown in from Baltimore, where he owns an electrical contracting company. The 65-year-old was tormented by the memory of seeing a boy being stuffed into an industrial dryer. Next to him stood Michael O'McCarthy, a writer and political activist from Costa Rica, who was beaten so badly he was treated at the school infirmary. To his left was Roger Kiser, a Chicken Soup for the Soul contributor who had driven down from Brunswick, Ga., bent on retribution. On the end was a quiet man named Robert Straley, who sells glow lights and carnival novelties. He drove up from Clearwater. He had been having recurring nightmares of a man sitting on his bed.

 

Then there was Willy Haynes. He was 65 and went by Bill now. A tall, broad man, Haynes had worked for 30 years for the Alabama Department of Corrections. Haynes didn't feel good. There were plenty of places he'd rather be. But he knew he had to do this."

 

The men now called themselves the White House Boys.  According to the article The men remember the same things: 

 

        "blood on the walls, bits of lip or tongue on the pillow, the smell of urine and whiskey, the way the bed springs sang with each blow. The way they cried out for Jesus or mama. The grinding of the old fan that muffled their cries. The one-armed man who swung the strap. They remember walking into the dark little building on the campus of the Florida School for Boys, in bare feet and white pajamas, afraid they'd never walk out."

 

According the the men boys were dragged to the White House in ones and twos and threes, and sometimes there was a line outside, and sometimes a white dog kept watch."

 

The white house boys are former students who had been held at the school in the 1950s and 1960s began to share accounts of abuses that they had suffered or observed against students.  By the early 2000s, there were about 400 members, survivors of this school from the 1950s and 1960s. Since the early 2000s, members of the group began to speak publicly about their experiences to the media, and to challenge the state to investigate practices and personnel at the school. More than 300 men have publicly recounted abuse and torture at the school. The survivors have had some internal struggles and set up more than one website. 

 

In 2009, the Florida School for Boys was the subject of an extensive special report. Allegations focusing on the 1960s included claims that one room was used for whipping white boys and another for black boys. The whippings were carried out by guards using a 3-foot-long belt made of leather and metal and were so severe that the victim's underwear could become embedded in his skin. One former student said that he had seen a boy trapped in a running laundry dryer at the school and suspected the boy was killed. One former student stated he was punished in the White House eleven times, receiving a total of more than 250 lashes. Others alleged they were whipped until they lost consciousness and that the punishments were made harsher for boys who cried. Some alumni also stated there was a "rape room" at the school, where boys were sexually abused by guards. The complainants said some of the victims were as young as nine years old.

 

In February 2010, the White House Boys filed a class action suit for damages against the state government, but it was dismissed by a judge in Leon County, Florida, because the statute of limitations had run out for such a suit. A bill introduced in the 2012 session of the Florida Legislature to provide compensation to victims of abuse at the school failed to pass.

 

There have been many positions throughout the years but no real investigations until 2008. On December 9, 2008, Florida Governor Charlie Crist directed the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to investigate the allegations of abuse, torture, and murder recounted by the White House Boys and their law firm. It took two years for the findings to be released. 

 

The FDLE conducted more than one hundred interviews of former students, family members of former students, and former staff members of the school during the 15-month investigation, but no concrete evidence was found linking any of the student deaths to the actions of school staff, or that there had been attempts by staff to conceal deaths. None of the graves were opened during the investigation.(The investigation determined that the thirty-one graves at the facility had been dug between 1914 and 1952.)

 

A forensic examination of the "White House" was conducted. No trace evidence of blood on the walls was found. Some former Dozier students told investigators that they felt they had "needed the discipline." Troy Tidwell, who was a staff member at the school during that period, said that punishments in the White House were not excessive. He said staff used the leather strap because they were concerned that spankings with wooden paddles, as had previously taken place, might injure the boys.

 

Department of Justice, 2011

 

In its December 2011 report of its investigation at the Dozier School, the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice made the following findings about staff at the school, who were cited for use of excessive force, inappropriate isolation, and extension of confinement:

 

The youth confined at Dozier and at JJOC were subjected to conditions that placed them at serious risk of avoidable harm in violation of their rights protected by the Constitution of the United States. During our investigation, we received credible reports of misconduct by staff members to youth within their custody. The allegations revealed systemic, egregious, and dangerous practices exacerbated by a lack of accountability and controls. . . . These systemic deficiencies exist because State policies and generally accepted juvenile justice procedures were not being followed. We found that . . . staff did not receive minimally adequate training. We also found that proper supervision and accountablity measures were limited and did not suffice to prevent undue restraints and punishments. Staff failed to report allegations of abuse to the State, supervisors, and administrators. Staff members often failed to accurately describe use of force incidents and properly record use of mechanical restraints.

 

 The University of South Florida 2012-2014: 

Dr. Erin Kimmerle is a forensic anthropologist and University of South Florida Associate Professor who had led a USF team of anthropologists, biologists, and archaeologists exploring the Marianna campus in a project authorized by the state. The stories of the White House Boys piqued her interest, as she had worked with international groups to identify remains and burials in areas of warfare. She thought the specialists at her university could aid the state in identifying undocumented areas of burial by using current technology and scientific techniques. She was especially curious why there are no records of the locations of the burials, as is customary at state prisons, hospitals and similar institutions.In 2012, the team used ground-penetrating radar and some excavation to identify where bodies are buried. However, in order to determine if the cause of death was from injury, illness, or murder, the bodies must be exhumed. Given the long history of reported violence at the school, many people believe that some students died because of abuse. Under existing law, exhumations can be done only at the request of a family member. But many of the burials are of students who were here in the early 20th century, and records make it difficult to identify their families.

 

By December 2012, the researchers indicated that they had located 55 graves on the grounds. Given that they had documented nearly 100 deaths at the school, the team believed that a second cemetery was likely to exist.

 

Thomas Varnadoe was sent to the Florida School for Boys in 1934 and died there a month later. His nephew, Glen Varnadoe, came forward in 2012 saying that he wanted to have his uncle's remains exhumed for reinterment at his family's cemetery near Lakeland. He had visited Dozier School in the 1990s, and a staff member showed him where his uncle might be buried. That location was not the same as the area where the most recent burials were found. The state originally limited the USF team to searching the existing, delineated cemetery grounds, saying they did not have the authority to order exhumation of graves. Researchers discuss work revealed that using the remains they did find on site, they made seven DNA identifications and 14 other presumptive matches. Many of the unmarked burial sites studied are thought to be of black students, who were segregated at the school. The team found that three times as many black students died and were buried at Dozier than white students, and that some of those boys were incarcerated for non-criminal charges like running away and incorrigibility. Black boys were less likely to be named in historical records, as well, reflecting the grim realities of reform school life in the segregated South. They eventually uncovered a students family had actually been sent a coffin filled with planks of wood after a boy named Thomas Curry died there under "Suspicious Circumstances while escaping". The ledger entry at the Dozier school said he was “killed on RR Bridge Chattahoochee, Fla.” Another document at Old Cathedral Cemetery in Philadelphia says he was “killed by train.” No one from Dozier ever reported his death to the state. He was returned in a casket to his family, who, in turn, buried him in Philadelphia. Or so the family thought. It wasn’t until a state investigation beginning in 2008 that Curry’s death certificate was found at Dozier. It said he died of a crushed skull from an “unknown cause.”  And it wasn’t until 2014, when University of South Florida anthropologists who have been working to unearth and identify remains on the former campus visited Philadelphia with Pennsylvania authorities, that the family learned Curry wasn’t in the casket – no bones, no clothing, no sign of him at all.

 

“Wood. Layers of pieces of wood,” said anthropologist Erin Kimmerle, explaining what she and her team found in the casket. “It was completely filled with wooden planks.”

 

At first, the team thought they had the wrong grave, but then they found Curry’s great-grandparents beneath the wood-filled casket…

 

Definitely some weird shit going on here.

 

In January 2016, the USF team issued their final report. They had made a total of seven DNA matches and 14 presumptive identifications from the 51 remains found at the site. A total of 55 burials were identified, but only 13 were made within the cemetery grounds, and "the rest of the graves were outside... in the woods, including under a roadway, brush, and a large mulberry tree." While they had documented 98 deaths at the site, they were unable to identify any more burials on the grounds. Some bodies may have been sent home to students' families. The USF team will continue to work with other organizations and families on DNA and other means of identification of the remains that were found. They created computer facial approximations from remains to help with identification. A number of families, including the Glen Varnadoe family, have filed requests to have the remains of their children or relatives repatriated.

 

In March 2014, Governor Rick Scott signed a bill authorizing up to $7500 per burial for those families who wanted to reinter the remains of relatives identified in unmarked graves at the Florida School for Boys. This followed the University of South Florida's report in January, which said they had been able to make matches of 21 sets of remains to known families. In addition, the bill proposes creating a task force to establish a memorial, "as well as deciding how to handle the remains of bodies that have yet to be identified or claimed by families. 

 

The white house boys also fought to have the bodies of orphans and those that were unidentified to be reinterred far away from the ground at Dozier.

 

In as late as 2019 they are still finding what could possibly be unmarked graves. Dr. Erin Kimmerle again began an investigation of 27 "anomalies" discovered by an engineering firm hired by the state's Department of Environmental Protection to help clean-up following Hurricane Michael, according to Florida's Department of State.

 

Though the 27 anomalies discovered by radar are "consistent with possible graves," according to Governor Ron DeSantis, only fieldwork will determine whether human remains are present at the site.

 

The 27 "anomalies" are located less than 200 yards from a section on the Dozier school property known as Boot Hill Cemetery, where, previously, USF researchers found 55 graves.

 

Unfortunately in an update we found it turns out Kimmerle's team said those anomalies were mostly roots from pine trees moved from the area years ago.

 

Survivor Charlie Fudge and friend Rachel McCoy pleaded to be allowed on the property during future surveys.

 

Fudge said he remembers a graveyard being on the east side of a set of buildings on the property, near Old Air Base Road. 

 

"I could sit on my cottage bench and see that cemetery," Fudge said. "My mind at 12 years old remembers that cemetery."

 

Kimmerle said her team did not find anything abnormal in that area, but nearby there is an established, fenced-in historic cemetery. 

 

McCoy, who attended the presentation with Fudge, said letting the men on the property to assist is "what they need."

 

Fudge said he hopes the White House does not get bulldozed over when the property is cleaned up in the future.

 

"That's very meaningful to me and the other men," he said. "I'm just an old guy, who went there 60 years ago, and went through hell."

 

John Bell, who spent eight months at the school, also spoke and said the school was managed by "corrupt officials of the state of Florida" and "it's been going on for way too long."

 

In 2017, the state formally apologized to the survivors and families for the abuses and deaths that happened at Dozier. More than 500 former Dozier students have come forward over the years to report physical, sexual and mental abuse at the hands of those who worked there.

On June 29th 2020, Neil Davis, the oldest member of The White house boys passed away in a nursing home. He never told most of his family, including his children, that he had been at Dozier and what he'd gone through. 

 

The white house boys vow to keep fighting for the rights of the victims. 

 

    "There are still 180 people not accounted for," she said. "We could lay it to rest. They're not just public, they were there. Let them walk the property." Fudge said

 

"We the White House boys; we know what has happened in that school," he said. "It's not going to be over until we say it's over."

 

There are some really great news articles used for this episode. There was a really great series of articles from The St Pete Times that were reprinted by the Tampa Bay Times that we recommend checking out. Also NPR has a ton of good info as well. 

 

Imdb list of 15 horror movies about school

 

https://m.imdb.com/list/ls022490849/

 

 

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OUR YOUTUBE

#80 - Creepy Canada (Sorry, eh!)

"Canadians have an abiding interest in surprising those Americans who have historically made little effort to learn about their neighbour to the North."

Peter Jennings

 

     It is these words that define today's episode! We are all going to be surprised and learn about some of the creepiest, craziest, weirdest things our neighbors to the North have to offer. If you're not from the U.S. the Canadians may not be your neighbors to the North but they'll offer you some Tim Hortons and be extremely polite to you anyways! Most people only know a few things about Canada: they are polite, they love hockey, it's cold as fuck, and they say eh. But we're going to learn you all a few more things, and we're gonna do it the Midnight Train way, by telling you about the creepy side of Canada! So without further ado jump on your moose, grab your hockey stick, throw on your toque, and let's ride!

 

 Off to our first stop! With one hand in our pockets, we head to the home of Alanis Morissette, Ottawa! We're taking a quick trip to the Ottawa Jail Hostel. This hostel has a bit of a history. As the name implies this was one a jail!  The jail was built next to the courthouse in 1862 and was the main jail in Ottawa for over a century! There's a tunnel that connects the jail to the courthouse. Only three official executions took place in the jail. The most famous being that of Patrick J. Whalen. Whalen assassinated a man by the name of Thomas D'Arcy Etienne Grace Hughes McGee, wow. McGee was an Irish-Canadian politician, Catholic spokesman, journalist, poet, and a Father of Canadian Confederation. The young McGee was a Catholic Irishman who opposed British rule of Ireland, and worked for a peasant revolution to overthrow British rule and secure Irish independence. He escaped arrest and fled to the United States in 1848, where he reversed his political beliefs. He became disgusted with American republicanism and democracy, and became intensely conservative in his politics and in his religious support for the Pope. Over 5,000 people witnessed Whelan's hanging, which was a large number considering the size of Ottawa at the time. The third (official) and final execution at the jail took place on March 27, 1946, when Eugène Larment, who had killed an Ottawa police detective, was hanged. The building remained in use as a jail until 1972 when the outdated facility was closed. The original gallows, however, are intact and remain fully functional. There’s also what appears to be an ‘unofficial’ gallows over a back staircase, so it’s hard to say how many prisoners were executed at the jail. So you know… Don't piss off the people in the next room. While the jail was in use, prisoners were held under very inhumane conditions. Up to 150 prisoners, consisting of men, women, and children, would be forced to share 60 small cells (1x3 meters) and 30 larger cells (2x3 meters); as well as six solitary confinement units. The windows were open to the elements early on and offered no protection from the freezing Ottawa winters and got summers. Inmates included murderers, the mentally ill, or those incarcerated for minor infractions such as drunk and disorderly conduct. Modern excavations have unearthed numerous unmarked graves. It's no wonder this hostel is considered a haunted creepy place. Most guests convey a heavy creepy feeling while staying there. Here's a few of the things people report about the place! The Ghost of Patrick Whelan: Arguably the hostel’s most famous spook, you’ll see Patrick Whelan walking the halls toward the gallows where he was hanged. His restless spirit is said to be caused by an undignified burial after his execution.

The Hole: Also known as solitary confinement, this area of the jail is filled with an ominous, negative energy. Visitors report overwhelming feelings of despair in this cramped, lightless space.

The Gallows: The jail’s preferred method of execution is still standing and functional. Hotel guests have heard footsteps, disembodied voices and other baffling sounds coming from the execution chamber.

The Lounge: The hostel’s lounge was once used to house women and children prisoners, echoes of whom can still be heard today. Visitors claim to hear sounds of children crying and screaming, as well as knocking on doors and footsteps in the empty room. 

Assistant Manager Jeff Delgado recounts a particularly memorable experience when a woman had checked herself into the old Warden’s office for the night. They became suspicious when she didn’t check out on time the following day, and when he went to check on the woman, she was still in bed. Jeff says: “The front desk agent shook the woman and she woke up very frightened and hysterical. According to her, there was a small girl that appeared to her in her sleep in the office surroundings, and wrapped her arms around her so that she would not be able to wake up. The girl was also supposedly trying to whisper something in her ear, from which the guest could only make out the word ‘help’.

 

“Although the story might seem outlandish, the guest was unaware that the particular room she was staying in was indeed the old Warden’s office. She was also able to describe in detail the surroundings of an office and the physical description of the little girl.”

 

On the plus side of you make it through the night without getting scared off… There's a free continental breakfast… So there's that.

 

Next up we are going to play "informer" in the land of "Snow". Heading to Shag Harbor, Nova Scotia. We're not talking about ghosts or cryptids, we're talking about aliens! Shag Harbor was the sight of a supposed UFO crash in 1967. Oh hell… We are gonna say it was definitely a ufo crash! 

In the Air

At approximately 7:15pm, Air Canada Flight 305 pilots Captain Pierre Charbonneau and First Officer Robert Ralph were flying above Quebec, about 180 miles west of Nova Scotia. Everything was perfectly routine until they noticed something trailing their plane. They witnessed a massive, rectangular-shaped object, orange in color, gliding through the skies. Trailing the rectangle were small, orange orbs that seemed almost like a tail to this main object.

The pilots watched with growing concern for several minutes when, suddenly, there was some sort of explosion near the rectangle. A large white cloud was left behind, sporadically changing colors from red to blue. Two minutes later, another explosion occurred leaving behind a similar cloud of colors. The pilots watched in amazement as the small orbs swarmed around the rectangle and, along with it, descended in to a thick cloud cover and disappeared out of sight. Both pilots, visibly shaken, reported the incident when they finally landed.

 

Meanwhile, back on the ground, residents of Shag Harbour would report seeing four orange lights in tight formation flashing in rapid sequence across the night sky. A group of teens that were out fishing noticed that the lights were making a brisk descent towards the water. But instead of disappearing into the murky depths, the lights seemed to float effortlessly on the surface before disappearing into the water. Because of this, the teens believed it to be an airplane that had crashed a half mile from the shore. Another young man who had been fishing quickly phoned the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) to report the crash of an aircraft. The police dispatcher brushed off the young man, believing him to have been inebriated, but soon, over a dozen other calls flooded the station. Police immediately went out to investigate.

 

Unbeknownst to the RCMP, Constable Ron Pound was patrolling an area near the alleged incident. He witnessed the four orange lights moving at tremendous speed. As he sped up his vehicle, he believed the four lights to all be connected to a single aircraft and estimated it to be about sixty feet in length. He reached the shoreline where he was soon joined by fellow officers, Police Corporal Victor Werbieki, and Constable Ron O’Brien. Along with over thirty other witnesses, they all watched as the orange lights slowly changed to a yellowish tint, and it moved eerily slow across the surface of the water, leaving a similar yellowish colored foam in its wake. Some witnesses claimed to have seen the actual structure of the object, reporting it as “dome-shaped.” Due to the exhaustive dedication by investigators, Chris Styles and Don Ledger, they were able to compile a list of first-hand witnesses, and individuals involved with the search and recovery efforts.

When the object was reported to crash-land in the water, and it began to sink into the ice-cold waters, a loud “whooshing” sound could be heard by several witnesses. The Canadian Coast Guard was called to the scene, but before they could arrive, two RCMP officers had already secured local fishermen’s boats and headed towards the area for a possible search and rescue mission.

The lights were no longer visible, but the yellow foam remained. The officers and fisherman who assisted, all said that the foam was like no sea foam they had ever seen, much thicker than anything that could be caused naturally. They had to cut their way through it just to look for survivors of the supposed crash.

After several hours of searching, nothing could be found. The RCMP, along with The Coast Guard, contacted their local NORAD station and the Rescue Coordination Center, asking if there had been any reports that evening of a missing aircraft either civilian or military. They had nothing.

The following morning of October 5th, the Canadian Forces Headquarters sent out specially trained divers from the Navy and RCMP to systematically search the seabed in the alleged area where the crash had occurred. They searched for several days and found absolutely nothing.

Local newspapers began to circulate speculative theories of a Russian spacecraft, submarine, or spy satellite being the enigmatic culprit. There were also rumors that the United States had launched their own investigation into the incident. Slowly, the headlines made their way to the back of the newspapers and soon faded into obscurity as most UFO cases often do. In 2018, it was announced that Celine Cousteau and Fabian Cousteau, grandchildren of Jacques Cousteau, were heading to Nova Scotia to investigate the incident. As part of their visit, their investigative team would carry out an underwater search to try to locate the craft that could possibly still sit at the bottom of water.

While their deep sea investigation did not yield a craft or materials, anomalous activity was recorded between their radio transmissions while underwater when in proximity to where the craft was said to have submerged. Perhaps the most compelling developments in the Shag Harbour incident are its striking resemblance to the now famous “Tic Tac UFO” incident. But we can find similarities with actions taken by the Tic Tac UFO and the object witnessed in Shag Harbour in 1967.

In fact, the event in Nova Scotia meets at least one of the traits laid out by the former director of the once secret Pentagon UFO program, Luis Elizondo. Under AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program), Elizondo compiled a list of incredible capabilities commonly associated with UFO sightings. He called these traits the “Five Observables.” As stated on the TTSA website, they include:

-Sudden and instantaneous acceleration

-Hypersonic velocities without signatures

-Low observability

-Trans-medium travel

-Positive lift

If we are to observe the actions of the Shag Harbour object(s), it most certainly hits #4, Trans-Medium Travel. According to the AATIP criteria, this involves:

Objects that have the ability to travel easily in various environments and conditions seemingly without any change in performance capabilities. Our current understanding of physics requires vehicles to be designed specifically according to their application. For this reason, there are stark differences between those vehicles that orbit in space, fly in the atmosphere, and travel in the sea. Objects that can travel in all three mediums using the same design and without compromising performance or degrading lift remains an enigma.

This, and several other observables, make the Shag Harbour object most certainly an enigma. And while its performance may have in fact been compromised that day in the skies and eventually, in the waters of Nova Scotia, it begs for continued investigation. The extraordinary testimonies given to Styles and Ledger, were said to be highly credible individuals. However, their names remained confidential to protect them from possible threat or security oaths.

Therefore, the aforementioned information, just like most witness testimony by military and authority figures, was given “off the record.”

No matter the case, something extremely strange occurred in Shag Harbor on that dark, cold night, and even stretched southward towards the United States.

It remains one of the most compelling UFO cases of all-time, only bringing forth more questions than answers. It’s left even the most skeptical minds scratching their heads.

It could be best summarized with a quote from an October 14th editorial from The Chronicle-Herald :

“Imagination and/or natural phenomena seem to be the weakest of explanations. It has been a tough week for skeptics.”

 

Next up we head to the birthplace of one of the worlds most beloved musicians. A man who will the ladies love and every man want to be. A man who helped write the greatest musical anthems of all time. That's right… Chad Kroeger of Nickelback! We're heading to Alberta! And may we be the first to say… Fuck you Alberta for that whole fiasco. Any rate that's not what we're talking about here… That dude is way scarier than our next creepy Canadian tale! We're heading more specifically to Fort Kent, Alberta. We're going from aliens to evil spirits… But not ghosts, we're talking  Wendigo! The tale of the fort Kent Wendigo is pretty crazy. 

The Wendigo is a mythological creature part of Algonquin legend that speaks of an evil spirit that could possess the minds of men mad with grief and despair, driving them to commit gruesome acts of murder and cannibalism.

 

Such a creature is alleged to exist somewhere around Fort Kent, with a chilling legend that goes back nearly 100 years ago.

 

Thomas Burton was a young doctor that arrived in Fort Kent from England in 1921 when it was but a humble colony. Burton came to Fort Kent with his wife to treat an outbreak of small pox that had befallen the small community, allegedly on the backs of rats.

Burton also hoped that by leaving England, he would leave behind the horrible memories he had of World War I.

 

Initially the young doctor was successful in fighting the disease, and the townsfolk embraced him and his wife as miracle workers, but the disease’s spread suddenly became uncontrollable, and Burton became overwhelmed with the sick and dying.

 

It wasn’t long before his wife too fell ill, and when she succumbed to the sickness, Burton locked himself in his house with her dead body.

 

In the following days, Burton went mad with grief, and according to legend was possessed by the Wendigo.

 

Under the evil spirit’s influence, he ate his wife’s flesh.

 

When he was done with her, Burton turned his attention to the residents of Fort Kent, and allegedly went on a killing spree for the next three days with few spared, said to be some of the grisliest murders in Canadian history.

 

At the end of the third day, it is said Burton disappeared into the woods around Fort Kent, and was never seen or heard from again.

 

When he and his wife had arrived, there were 150 people in Fort Kent — 11 were all that remained, at least according to the legend.

 

Burton’s was not the first high-profile case of Wendigo possession in Western Canada — the first official hanging to take place in the region was also attributed to a man possessed by the evil spirit.

 

Swift Runner, a Plains Cree trapper, was arrested after he admitted to killing and eating his wife and children during the winter of 1878, 25 miles from a Hudson’s Bay Company outpost stocked with emergency supplies.

 

Because he committed such a heinous crime while help was so close by, he was believed to be possessed by the Wendigo

 

After he confessed to the crime, Swift Runner was hung in Fort Saskatchewan.

 

Today the community we know as Fort Kent no longer sits at the location Burton’s terrible murders were committed, but residents sometimes report strange cries resembling that of a coyote coming from the tree line, and children are warned not to be in the fields too long past dark, lest they be taken by the Wendigo. Sounds like a pleasant place!

 

As you all know Tom Cochran once told us all via song that life is a highway and we're gonna ride it all night long to where he's from… Manitoba Canada! Now if you follow your cryptids, like you should you have probably heard of Ogopogo, a lake monster in british columbia but some people are not aware of another pretty famous lake monster in Manitoba. This one is somewhat named after Ogopogo, it's called Manipogo, get it… Cus Manitoba...Mani...pogo… well whatever. In Canadian folklore, the Manipogo is a lake monster said to live in Lake Manitoba, Manitoba, Canada. There is also a Lake Winnipegosis sea monster called Winnepogo, thought possibly to be the same creature as the lakes are connected. Not very creative with the names but… You know… Canada? The monster is described as being from 4 to 15 meters long. It is described as "A long muddy-brown body with humps that show above the water, and a sheep-like head." People have claimed to have seen the lake monster since the 1800s. The name was created by Tom Locke, a land inspector in charge of planning the provincial government's program for public playgrounds and recreational parks. On Aug. 10, 1960, he and 16 others said they saw three creatures swimming near the area of Toutes Aides, a community 245 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, on the shore of Lake Manitoba. First Nations stories of Manipogo go back centuries, while the first documented sighting by a white settler came in 1909, when Hudson's Bay Company fur trader Valentine McKay claimed to see a huge creature in Cedar Lake. Timber inspector C.F. Ross and a friend were next, saying they saw a single-horned creature that looked like a dinosaur in 1935. And in 1948, C.P. Alric claimed to see something rise up from Lake Manitoba and let out a "prehistoric type of dinosaur cry." Here are some of the stories of sightings:

1957: Louis Belcher and Eddie Nipanik say they saw a giant serpent-like creature in the lake.

Aug. 12, 1962: Two fishermen, Richard Vincent and John Konefall, claim to have seen a large creature, like a serpent or giant snake from their boat on Lake Manitoba near the mouth of the Waterhen River.

1960s: A couple say they saw a "reptile-like beast" surfacing about 10 metres from their boat.

1989: Sean Smith and family, visiting from Minneapolis on a camping trip, stayed at Shallow Point Campground, off Highway 6 on Lake Manitoba. He described seeing "many humps" in the lake, about 25 metres offshore.

1997: Several reports by cross-country campers from Quebec staying at the Lundar Beach Campground describe what appeared to be a large reptile head rising and falling in the water, more than 100 metres offshore. Swimmers were asked to leave the water, but the "head" only appeared one time. It was dismissed as a floating log, but no log was seen afterward.

2004: Commercial fisherman Keith Haden, originally from Newfoundland and Labrador, reported that several of his fishing nets on Lake Manitoba near the narrows were torn up by what seemed like an ocean shark or killer whale. The fish that were in the nets were not nibbled on, but actually torn in half, he said, by what seemed like huge bites.

2009: Several residents at Twin Lakes Beach reported seeing several humps a few hundred metres from their lakefront cottages. No photos were taken.

2011: Many sightings of several humps emerging and then submerging, seen from offshore, were reported at locations like Marshy Point, Scotch Bay, and Laurentia Beach by security personal patrolling flooded cottage and home areas.

Aug. 9, 2012: A report claimed that just offshore of the outlet at Twin Beach Road, something surfaced twice, showing a scaled/sawtooth jagged back, like that of a giant sturgeon. 

Sounds like a good time to me! Let's roll!

 

Where are we rolling too? Well hopefully we'll run into Rain Maida of Our Lady Peace cus we're heading to a town near St. Catherine's Ontario. We're actually heading to Thorold Ontario and we're gonna check out the Blue Ghost Tunnel! The Merritton Tunnel, also known as the Blue Ghost Tunnel and the Grand Trunk Railway Tunnel, is an abandoned railway tunnel in Thorold, Ontario. The decision to build the tunnel came from the need for a more durable and less interrupted way to cross the new canal situated directly above it via vehicles. Constructed in 1875, Completed in 1876, and Opened in 1887. The tunnel is located between locks 18 and 19 of the former third Welland Canal and was built using Queenston limestone, spanning a total length of 713 feet when including the winged stone work at either end. Hundreds of men armed with picks and shovels, as well as several horses were used in the excavation of the tunnel. The tunnel was used periodically until 1915, when Harry Eastwood was the last official engineer to pilot a train through the tunnel. Following that, the tunnel was used only occasionally by farmers to transport cattle or as a safe passage from the weather. Several fatal accidents occurred during the construction and use of the tunnel and the railway running through it. In 1875, a 14-year-old was killed when he was crushed under a large rock. On January 3, 1903 at 7:03 AM, Engine Number 4 and Engine Number 975 met in a head-on collision approximately a third of a mile from the western entrance of the tunnel. The trains were moving at approximately 22 miles per hour when they crashed, and the firemen of both trains, Charles Horning of Engine Number 4 and Abraham Desult from Engine Number 975, died as a result of their injuries. Charles Horning, the fireman on the express train was gruesomely pinned between the flaming hot boiler and the tentler. During his attempted rescue, the engineers and post-guards tried to pull his mangled body free, which resulted in his arms and legs being messily severed from his body.  

 

One train worker even reported that Horning’s watch still ticked on his severed arm. His body would never be fully recovered from the remains of the train.  

 

The fireman for the Mogul train, Abraham Desult, was flung into the boiler resulting in burns over 90 percent of his body. He was rushed to the hospital and died five hours later. 

 

For the Blue Ghost Tunnel, stories include people seeing blue wisps that are said to be the spirits of the Firemen. Alternate versions claim a blue mist haunts the tunnel and a ghost dog prowls the area at night. 

 

Some say the wisps do not belong to the Firemen, but to the souls of those whose nearby graves were flooded in the 1920’s. At that time, St. Peter’s Cemetery was flooded over to make way for a canal reservoir. Some families removed their beloved’s bones from the Lutheran burial ground before the flooding occurred but many graves remained. In 2009, a man found human remains in the area after water levels sank to a low level. 

 

Since people talk about feeling a shove, hearing footsteps and voices that don't belong to anyone. There are reports of blue balls of light to go asking with the most as well. There are many skeptics however and there have been a few paranormal investigators that have claimed they didn't find any proof of the tunnel being haunted. But hey… What do they know!

 

Ok we already made a Nickelback joke about Alberta… But now we're turning it lose and working for the weekend in the home of fucking Loverboy! While they're not from our next location exactly, they are from Calgary which from what the internet says it's about an hour and a half away… Close fucking enough.  We're not headed to Calgary as I said… We're headed to Banff! Banff is a resort town and one of Canada's most popular tourist destinations. Known for its mountainous surroundings and hot springs, it is a destination for outdoor sports and features extensive hiking, biking, scrambling and skiing destinations within the area. Sunshine Village, Ski Norquay and Lake Louise Ski Resort are the three nearby ski resorts located within the national park. We're not here for a sight seeing visit though… At least not a ski weekend. We're here to check out the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. Since it opened to the public in 1888, the Banff Springs Hotel has seen history, celebrity, and rebuilds, but it’s also seen tragedy. Millions of guests have checked in, but a few have never checked out. Some even believe that they still roam the halls of the iconic concrete castle in the Rockies, today. In 132 years, the popular Alberta vacation spot has allegedly set the scene for horrific murders, suicides, and terrible accidents. Rooms have been boarded up, and the paranormal are frequently recorded.

 

Some are skeptical, but many claim to have seen it with their own eyes. The bride of the Banff Springs is perhaps the most ‘active’ shadow of the hotel, even appearing on collector’s stamps and coins. Like many ghost stories, retold hundreds of times, the details have become embellished and no one is quite sure who or what happened to the elusive women in white.

 

The most popular theory, dating back to 1920, was that a bride had fallen down a flight of stairs after she tripped on the hem of her dress. She’s typically reported, veiled and dancing throughout the grand ballroom.

 

Other unexplained apparitions and heavy activity have been recorded in room 873. Unfortunately, for adrenaline junkies or Shining fans looking to get a 5-star spook, the room doesn’t actually exist anymore. Apparently, after years of people claiming that they were terrorized in the suite, the hotel decided to permanently seal the room. Guests in the room have reported being awakened by screaming. When they turned on the lights, they would see bloody hand prints on the mirror. Depending on who tells the story, the hand prints either disappeared before hotel staff had a chance to clean them or wouldn’t come off at all. Although hotel staff claims that no such crime ever took place, the room is believed to be the place where a man killed his wife and daughter before taking his own life.

 

Stories of Sam McCAuley, a genial old Scotsman who was head bellman during the sixties and seventies, have been circulating around the hotel since his passing in 1975. Supposedly, Sam is a helpful sort of spirit, and most stories involving him mention some service he’s provided to staff or guests. One incident involved two elderly women calling the bell desk for assistance after they found their key would not work. The regular bellman was occupied with other duties and didn’t respond for 15 minutes. By the time he arrived at their door, it was unlocked. One of the women said an older bellman in a plaid jacket, matching Sam’s description exactly, had helped them. Other stories including guests seeing Sam haunting his old office (now a guest room) on the mezzanine floor as well as seeing apparitions and feeling cold spots on the sixth, seventh or ninth floors of the hotel. 

 

While they’d rather not mention room numbers, there are specific rooms that staff say are haunted aside from 873 Guests have reported having the pillows yanked out from under their heads while they slept or even being pushed off the bed by some unseen entity. Whatever spirits haunt this room, it’s safe to say that if they can’t rest in peace, they want to make sure you won’t either. 

 

Next up we roll up like today's Tom sawyer and live in the limelight with rush in Toronto! We are gonna check out the gibraltar point lighthouse. The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse is a lighthouse located on the Toronto Islands in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Begun in 1808, it is the oldest existing lighthouse on the Great Lakes, and one of Toronto's oldest buildings. The lighthouse is perhaps best known for the demise of its first keeper, German-born John Paul Radelmüller, whose 1815 murder forms the basis of Toronto's most enduring ghost story. Recent research has verified many aspects of the traditional tale of his death and identified the soldiers charged with but ultimately acquitted of the crime. A local legend is that the lighthouse is haunted by its first keeper John Paul Radelmüller. Rademuller disappeared under mysterious circumstances on January 2, 1815. The story goes that he was murdered by two soldiers who had been enjoying his home-brewed beer. Versions of the story differ slightly (one version told in the mid-2000s was that Rademuller was killed after the soldiers bought the beer, but saw it freeze on the cold winter night and assumed that the alcohol content was so low that the lighthouse keeper was trying to rip them off). But most agree that Rademuller was killed that night and dismembered by his killers, who buried his body in a few graves near the lighthouse. His ghost is said to still haunt the site.

The story was recorded by John Ross Robertson in 1908 in Landmarks of Toronto and has become a staple of spooky local lore ever since. Even in his telling, Robertson raises skepticism that the murder ever occurred, but he writes that he heard the story from the current lighthouse keeper, George Durnan, who had apparently gone looking for a body and had dug up a coffin with a jawbone. The plaque at the lighthouse mentions the ghost story and the jawbone, although this was a somewhat controversial decision. People report seeing the apparition of a man wandering the grounds. Some say it is Radelmüller looking for his lost limbs! Since nights bring unexplained meaning sounds and an unexplained mist forming. Inside the tower there's unexplained thumping, banging, and echos. There's also reports of footsteps and what sounds like something being dragged. Creepy lighthouse… Fun stuff!

 

You fuckers hungry? I'm sure Moody is. At any rate at our next stop maybe we'll hunt some orcs with 3 inches of blood or pet a skinny puppy, drink some beer with The Real McKenzies or get a shitty hair cut with Devin Townshend. Or maybe we can head down to the old spaghetti factory in Vancouver and go ghost hunting! The first Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant opened at this location in Gastown in 1970. Located in what was once the headquarters of W.H. Malkin Co. Ltd. (grocery wholesalers).

 

The Old Spaghetti Factory has four ghosts in residence. The first and best known is the spirit of a tram conductor. He frequents the old trolley car that’s parked inside the restaurant and contains dining tables. The trolley, Number 53, was once a part of the British Columbia Electric Railway Company’s fleet of electric trams. Built in nearby New Westminster in 1904, it served as a public transit trolley in and around Vancouver for many years. In 1957, it and dozens of other trolley cars were decommissioned in favour of the electric and diesel buses that are commonplace in the city today.

 

The trolley car was installed in the building in 1969, during the set-up of the restaurant. It’s up for debate whether the conductor’s ghost came with the trolley or not. Some say he died in a collision on an underground rail line below the restaurant. But this is unlikely because Vancouver’s trolley cars all ran at street level. And as the building has no historical connection with the B.C. Electric Railway Co., the ghost probably came with the tram car.

 

Tram Car 53Regardless of his origin, various staff members have seen the ghost of the uniformed conductor. He always appears seated at the same dining table inside the streetcar late at night, after closing. Also, place settings are moved by unseen hands, and inexplicable cold spots are experienced inside the car.

 

The second ghost at The Old Spaghetti Factory is a small, mischievous spirit with a ruddy face and bright red hair. Simply known as the Little Red Man or Looky-loo, he calls out to staff members by name and strolls through the kitchen. His favourite prank is to surprise female customers in the ladies’ washroom. On one particular occasion, two ladies saw the dwarfish man leave one of the cubicles, dressed in a red shirt and red long johns. After looking at them and laughing mischievously, he left through the washroom door. To their surprise, nobody else had seen the unmistakable man leave the washroom. It’s said that one of the women took a picture of the ghost. But when the film was developed, he appeared as a blur.

 

Nobody knows who the little red man is or why he haunts the restaurant. One thing’s for certain, however — he’s a devilish little fellow.

 

The restaurant’s third ghost is that of a young boy. In early 2012, this ghost gave a female server a terrible fright. She was in the back section of the restaurant, helping to close up for the night. While she was busy resetting some tables, a boy ran past her towards the very back. With it being so late and no customers left in the restaurant, she thought it was strange that a boy was running around. So she followed him. The boy ran under a table alongside the back wall, turned around and looked up at her. When she looked at his face, she saw that his eye sockets were empty. Terrified, she ran to the front of the restaurant to tell the manager about what she’d seen. She told him that she couldn’t work at the restaurant any longer and resigned on the spot.

 

A psychic visited the restaurant and identified the ghost of the little boy as Edward. She also pointed out that there’s a vortex located at the back of the premises. (A vortex is a supposed portal to other dimensions that enables spirits to come into our world. Some also believe that vortexes are linked to the Earth’s electromagnetic field. This influences where and when these portals open and close.) She also claimed that several small artifacts that decorate the restaurant have spirits attached to them.

 

The boy ghost is thought to be responsible for bending cutlery on tables in the back of the restaurant. One night during closing hours, a staff member walked through the back area to check that place settings had been properly laid out. He was stunned to see that each cutlery item was bent upwards on one of the tables. Other staff members saw the bent cutlery, too. But by the time they brought the restaurant manager over to see, it was all back to normal. In addition, the ghost sometimes places a dining chair on top of a table in the back section, which the staff find in the morning.

 

In 2015, another server had an encounter with Edward. After closing, she saw the boy dressed in a flat cap, wool jacket and corduroy pants run towards the back of the restaurant. She chased him and, as he’s done before, he ducked under a table. She ran to the front of the restaurant to take the manager back with her to see the boy. But when they got there he was gone. And then they noticed that the place settings had been disturbed — the cutlery was all in a pile in the middle of the tabletop.

 

On another occasion, a customer sat in a row of booths behind the entrance to the restaurant. She saw the boy reflected in a mirror on the back wall. He was using an arm to spin around a narrow column behind the front desk. When she turned around to look at the boy, he’d vanished.

 

The fourth ghost in the Old Spaghetti Factory is of a little girl who appears at a table in the front window. She sits and holds a balloon. Nobody knows who she is. Once, a friend of the restaurant’s general manager had a conversation with her that lasted several minutes. The little girl explained to him that she was looking for her mother. When he returned to the table after telling the manager about her, she’d disappeared. Dinner and a ghost show sounds pretty awesome.

 

Next up we're not going to hell but we'll still be in good company with The Dead With In Regina, Saskatchewan. And maybe we'll win some money and see a ghost or two! Casino Regina is a casino located on Saskatchewan Drive — (formerly South Railway Street) — in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. It operates in the city's former union station, a Tyndall and ashlar stone structure completed in 1912. The Beaux-Arts style Union Station was constructed in 1911-12 and was actually Regina's third train station; the first is now a museum in Broadview, Saskatchewan. The station was completed the same year the deadly "Regina Cyclone" struck the city, tearing through Wascana Park and gutting part of the downtown area. The building underwent a major expansion in 1931, and the original façade was redone in a simpler Art Deco style with Tyndall stone. As well, terrazzo floors, marble support columns and plaster molded ceilings where added to the interior.[1]

 

In the early 1990s, cutbacks to rail services throughout Canada lead to the closure of Regina's Union Station. The Station had been an important part of Regina's history and heritage since its opening in 1912. After the station's closure, its fate remained unknown for several years. Union Station was designated as an official heritage site in 1991.

 

By 1995, a $37 million construction project began to convert the vacant station into the province's second casino. In 1996, Casino Regina opened. The first recorded supernatural encounter occurred in the 1930s, when a ghostly image of a woman was captured in a photograph, even though the room was empty. To this day the photo haha in the casino! Below the Casino the mystery continues in one of the former holding cells. Rumour has it that one prisoner was so determined to avoid jail time that he committed suicide by hanging himself. His ghost is felt so often that many staff members refuse to even go into his cell, even though it is now used for storage. Not to many places you can gamble and see ghosts at the same time!

 

Next up we are heading to new brunswick… Look... apparently there is not one band or musician that most of you people would know from new brunswick so we got nothing here. The only one that any of us have heard of is Stompin Tom Connors, he sings a song called The Hockey Song which I guarantee you've heard of you've attended a hockey game.  Well with that dumb shit behind us let's head to the Dungarvon River. A young cook by the name of Ryan hired himself out to work in a lumber camp near the Dungarvon River.  When he arrived at camp, he brought all his worldly possessions with him.  Around his waist was fastened a money belt stuffed with coins and large bills.  Nobody knew where he got the money, but the young cook made no secret of the fact that there was plenty of it.

 

Ryan was a handsome fellow, tall and strong with ruddy cheeks and black, curly hair.  He was well liked and could whoop and holler better than anyone in the camp; and a good strong shout was an accomplishment much valued among woodsmen.

 

Every morning Ryan was the first one up so as to prepare breakfast and fill the lunch pails with bread and salt pork.  Then he would let out a tremendous ear-splitting whoop to get everyone up.  After breakfast the men would go off to work leaving young Ryan alone.

 

It was an unlucky day for Ryan, for on this particular morning, the camp boss decided to remain with the young cook.  The boss was a stranger, but he was respected and his orders were obeyed.

 

When the men returned late in the afternoon, they found young Ryan lying lifeless on the floor.  He was dead and his money belt was gone.

 

When asked what had happened, the boss said the young cook had taken sick suddenly and died.  None dared question him further but the woodsmen were suspicious.  Where was the money belt?

 

That night a raging storm swept upon the camp making it impossible to leave so the men had to bury the poor cook in a shallow grave in the forest.  As they trudged back to the camp they stopped dead in their tracks, for above the howling and moaning of the wind came the most dreadful whoops and screams anyone has ever heard.  It continued all that night and all the next day driving the men crazy with fear.  They left camp never to return.

 

For years the haunting sounds continued until Father Murdock, a priest from Renous, was asked to put the poor spirit to rest.

 

From over the wilderness grave Father Murdock read some holy words from the Bible and made a sign of the cross.

 

Some say Father Murdock succeeded in quieting the ghost but others declare the fearful cries of Ryan can be heard to this very day.

Next we are taking a long journey up to the Yukon Territory. There's a dude who's production and writing credits include Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Kendrick Lamar… Whatever… Fuck that guy… we are headed there to check it an old hotel and bar. The Caribou Hotel is one of the oldest buildings in the Southern Lakes Region and is one of the last two historic three-storey frame commercial buildings in Yukon dating from the early 20th century. This landmark structure stands in its original location and is one of the first properties recognized when entering Carcross. Its size, massing and historic character provide an anchor to Dawson Charlie Street, one of the last Yukon streets composed entirely of historic buildings relatively unchanged since 1910. The Caribou Hotel has housed one of Yukon's longest continuously operating food and lodging businesses. In Carcross, the hotel prospered under several owners including Dawson Charlie, who had made a fortune from his Klondike gold claims. But Dawson Charlie died on January 26, 1908, when he fell of the rail bridge at Carcross.

 

Edwin and Bessie Gideon then rented the hotel from his estate.

 

But the building burned to the ground on Christmas Eve in 1909. So the Gideons built a new hotel on the same spot, using wood from a building that had been torn down in nearby Conrad City.

 

The Caribou’s interesting history continued when, in 1918, Polly the Parrot moved in. Captain James Alexander, owner of Engineer Mine, had asked the Gideons to take care of the Parrot while he went outside. Alexander drowned when the Princess Sophia sank in 1918. Polly stayed with the Gideons who continued to operate the hotel. When Edwin Gideon died in 1925, Bessie ran it until she died in the hotel on October 27, 1933.

 

Since then, strange things have been seen at the Caribou. The hotel is said to be haunted by Bessie's ghost, considered a shy spirit. A story is told of the figure of a woman who often stands near a third floor window and bangs on the floorboards. She is thought to be the ghost of Bessie, described as a spirit that is neither friendly nor unfriendly.

 

Though she was said to have been buried in Carcross, a cemetery survey has been unable to find Bessie Gideon’s grave, but Polly the Parrot, who died in the hotel in 1972, is buried in the cemetery. The Caribou Hotel is now a Yukon historic site, soon to reopen under new management and - legend has it - still haunted. 

 

Well that's gonna do it for our first trip to creepy Canada. You politely mortified us and showed us a good time and we will definitely be back to run another train through creepy Canada! There's tons of crazy hotels and buildings with ghost stories. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the ones we picked and hopefully we did them some sort of justice. If there's some wrong info blame the fucking internet.

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#79 Guillermo Del Toro (director extraordinario)

“I cannot pontificate about it, but by the time I'm done, I will have done one movie, and it's all the movies I want.

People say, you know, "I like your Spanish movies more than I like your English-language movies because they are not as personal", and I go "Fuck, you're wrong!" Hellboy is as personal to me as Pan's Labyrinth. They're tonally different, and yes, of course you can like one more than the other – the other one may seem banal or whatever it is that you don't like. But it really is part of the same movie. You make one movie.

 

Hitchcock did one movie, all his life.”

 

—Guillermo del Toro, Twitch Film, January 15, 2013

 

Ok, passengers! First off, if you don’t know who Guermillo Del Toro is, press pause on this show, smack yourself in the mouth and then go watch Pan’s Labrynth, Hellboy or even Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and then come back to finish. Go on… git! We’ll wait!

 

Del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, the son of Guadalupe Gómez and Federico del Toro Torres, an automotive entrepreneur. Both of whom are of Spanish descent. He was raised in a strict Catholic household. Del Toro studied at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Cinematográficos, at the University of Guadalajara. Having a taste for the macabre at an early age, del Toro decorated his family home with decidedly spooky elements. Del Toro loves monsters. . He claims that monsters used to crowd into his room at night, and he made a pact with them: If they let him go to the washroom, he’d be their friend for life. It worked, and del Toro says, “To this day, monsters are the thing I love most.” Del Toro liked monsters so much as a child that his Catholic grandmother, fearing for his soul, performed a real-life exorcism on him, and when that didn’t work, she actually performed a second one. Del Toro considers himself a book-person first and foremost, and there were two books that shaped his universe as a child. One was an encyclopedia of health (which led to an obsession with anatomy), and the other an encyclopedia of art.

 

When del Toro was about eight years old, he began experimenting with his father's Super 8 camera, making short films with Planet of the Apes toys and other objects. One short focused on a "serial killer potato" with ambitions of world domination; it murdered del Toro's mother and brothers before stepping outside and being crushed by a car.  Del Toro made about 10 short films before his first feature, including one titled Matilde, but only the last two, Doña Lupe and Geometria, have been made available.  He wrote four episodes and directed five episodes of the cult series La Hora Marcada, along with other Mexican filmmakers such as Emmanuel Lubezki and Alfonso Cuarón.Del Toro got his first big break when he made Cronos in 1993.The movie, about the effects of a device that confers immortality, won nine Ariel Awards from the Mexican Academy of Film—including best picture, best director, best screenplay, and best original story—and also received the International Critics’ Week grand prize at the Cannes film festival. 

 

Del Toro studied special effects and make-up with special-effects artist Dick Smith. Dick Smith had been a huge influence on del Toro throughout his life. He bought Smith’s make-up kit when The Exorcist came out in 1973, and applied for his make-up course in New York in 1987.  He spent 10 years as a special-effects make-up designer and formed his own company, Necropia. He also co-founded the Guadalajara International Film Festival. Later in his directing career, he formed his own production company, the Tequila Gang.

 

In 1997, at the age of 33, Guillermo was given a $30 million budget from Miramax Films to shoot another film, Mimic. After turning in a draft of his screenplay for Mimic to Miramax, the studio was not happy with how little was explained about the creatures at the centre of the story, and decided to commission a number of rewrites. One of these drafts was written by none other than Steven Soderbergh, but almost none of his work ended up in the film. Del Toro is not a fan of second unit work, and for his director’s cut of Mimic he managed to excise the majority of the second unit footage. Robert Rodriguez was one of the second unit directors on the film. Mimic was a very troubled production, and del Toro claims that his experience butting heads with studio execs at Miramax was actually more traumatic than his father’s kidnapping( which we'll discuss in a bit): “What was happening to me and the movie was far more illogical than kidnapping, which is brutal, but at least there are rules.” He was ultimately unhappy with the way Miramax had treated him during production, which led to his friend James Cameron almost coming to blows with Miramax co-founder and owner Harvey Weinstein during the 70th Academy Awards.

 

In 2001 Del toro made The Devil's backbone. The Devil’s Backbone, was produced by renowned Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar. Almodovar afforded del Toro a level of creative freedom that he’d never experienced up to that point, and the eternally grateful del Toro has tried to pay this gesture forward as a producer for many directors’ films. The film was an international co-production between Spain and Mexico. Del Toro wrote the first draft before writing his debut film Cronos. This "very different" version was set in the Mexican Revolution and focused not on a child's ghost but a "Christ with three arms". According to del Toro, and as drawn in his notebooks, there were many iterations of the story, some of which included antagonists who were a "doddering ... old man with a needle," a "desiccated" ghost with black eyes as a caretaker (instead of the living Jacinto who terrorizes the orphans), and "beings who are red from head to foot."

 

As to motivation for the villain, according to the actor who portrayed him (Eduardo Noriega), Jacinto "suffered a lot when he was a child at this orphanage. Somebody probably treated him wickedly: this is his heritage. And then there is the brutalizing effect of the War." Noriega further notes that "What Guillermo did was to write a biography of Jacinto (which went into Jacinto's parents, what they did in life, and more) and gave it to me."

 

DDT Studios in Barcelona created the final version of the crying ghost (victim and avenger) Santi, with his temple that resembled cracked, aged porcelain. The response was overwhelmingly positive, though it did not receive the critical success that Pan's Labyrinth would in 2006. Del Toro considers The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth to be companion pieces, and claims that they reveal “symmetries and reflections” if watched together.

 

His next film was on 2002, Blade 2. directed by Guillermo Del Toro and written by David S. Goyer, it is a sequel to the first film and the second part of the Blade film series, followed by Blade: Trinity. Guillermo del Toro was hired to direct Blade II by New Line production president Michael De Luca after Stephen Norrington turned down the offer to direct the sequel. Del Toro chose not to alter the script too much from the ideas created by Goyer and Snipes. "I wanted the movie to have a feeling of both a comic book and Japanese animation", said the director. "I resurrected those sources and viewed them again. I dissected most of the dailies from the first movie; I literally grabbed about four boxes of tapes and one by one saw every single tape from beginning to end until I perfectly understood where the language of the first film came from. I studied the style of the first one and I think Norrington used a tremendous narrative style. His work is very elegant". Blade II was released on March 22, 2002. This was during a period of the year (months March and April) considered to be a bad time for sequels to be released. Despite this, the film became the highest-grossing film of the Blade series, making $80 million in the United States and $150 million worldwide. 

 

Hellboy is a 2004 supernatural superhero film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro from a story by Del Toro and Peter Briggs. It is based on the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel Hellboy: Seed of Destruction by Mike Mignola. Del Toro and Hellboy creator Mike Mignola envisioned the film as a Ray Harryhausen film. The film was shopped and rejected by various studios for years due to studios disliking the title, script, and the fact that Perlman was cast as Hellboy.[7][8] Del Toro invited Harryhausen to teach the film's animators what made his effects techniques unique but he declined, feeling that modern films were too violent. While writing the script, Del Toro researched occult Nazi philosophies and used them as a reference for the film's opening scene. In an early version of the script, the gyroscope portal was described being made out of rails that formed into pentagrams, hexagrams, and inverted stars to illustrate the film's magic and occult elements. Del Toro chose to alter the origin from the comic to give main characters interconnected origins. Aside from working with Perlman before, Del Toro chose him for the title role because he felt Perlman can deliver subtlety and nuance with makeup.[23] Del Toro assigned his real life friend, Santiago Segura, to play the train driver who assaults Hellboy. The film was shot 6 days a week for 130 days, Mondays through Saturdays without a second unit. Sundays were reserved for editing.  Del Toro noted that the film could have commenced filming in 1998, however, the film had difficulty finding a committed studio due to the stigma Hollywood associated superhero and comic book films with, at the time. The action scenes were staged after Harryhausen films with little to no camera movement using wide shots. The cemetery sequence was filmed in a real cemetery in Prague.

 

Pan's labyrinth is a  2006 dark fantasy film written and directed by Guillermo del Toro. The film is  a Spanish-Mexican co-production. Del Toro stated that he considers the story to be a parable, influenced by fairy tales, and that it addresses and continues themes related to his earlier film The Devil's Backbone, to which Pan's Labyrinth is a spiritual successor, according to del Toro in his director's DVD commentary. The idea for Pan's Labyrinth came from Guillermo del Toro's notebooks, which he says are filled with "doodles, ideas, drawings and plot bits". He had been keeping these notebooks for twenty years. At one point during production, he left the notebook in a taxi in London and was distraught, but the cabbie returned it to him two days later. Though he originally wrote a story about a pregnant woman who falls in love with a faun,[12] Sergi López said that del Toro described the final version of the plot a year and a half before filming. Lopez said that "for two hours and a half he explained to me all the movie, but with all the details, it was incredible, and when he finished I said, 'You have a script?' He said, 'No, nothing is written'". López agreed to act in the movie and received the script one year later; he said that "it was exactly the same, it was incredible. In his little head he had all the history with a lot of little detail, a lot of characters, like now when you look at the movie, it was exactly what he had in his head". 

 

Del Toro got the idea of the faun from childhood experiences with "lucid dreaming". He stated on The Charlie Rose Show that every midnight, he would wake up, and a faun would gradually step out from behind the grandfather's clock. Originally, the faun was supposed to be a classic half-man, half-goat faun fraught with beauty. But in the end, the faun was altered into a goat-faced creature almost completely made out of earth, moss, vines, and tree bark. Some of the  works he drew on for inspiration include Lewis Carroll's Alice books, Jorge Luis Borges' Ficciones, Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan and The White People, Lord Dunsany's The Blessing of Pan, Algernon Blackwood's Pan's Garden and Francisco Goya's works. In 2004, del Toro said: "Pan is an original story. Some of my favourite writers (Borges, Blackwood, Machen, Dunsany) have explored the figure of the god Pan and the symbol of the labyrinth. These are things that I find very compelling and I am trying to mix them and play with them." It was also influenced by the illustrations of Arthur Rackham.There are differing ideas about the film's religious influences. Del Toro himself has said that he considers Pan's Labyrinth "a truly profane film, a layman's riff on Catholic dogma", but that his friend Alejandro González Iñárritu described it as "a truly Catholic film". Del Toro's explanation is "once a Catholic, always a Catholic," however he also admits that the Pale Man's preference for children rather than the feast in front of him is intended as a criticism of the Catholic Church. Additionally, the priest's words during the torture scene were taken as a direct quote from a priest who offered communion to political prisoners during the Spanish Civil War: "Remember my sons, you should confess what you know because God doesn't care what happens to your bodies; He already saved your souls."

 

Hellboy II: The Golden Army is a 2008 American superhero film based on the fictional character Hellboy created by Mike Mignola. The film was written and directed by  del Toro and is a sequel to the 2004 film Hellboy, which del Toro also directed. Ron Perlman reprises his starring role as the eponymous character. Hellboy II: The Golden Army was released by Universal Pictures.The director sought to create a film trilogy with the first sequel anticipated for release in 2006. Revolution Studios planned to produce the film and distribute it through a deal with Columbia Pictures, but by 2006, their distribution deal wasn't renewed and Revolution began refocusing on exploiting their film library. In August 2006, Universal Pictures acquired the project with the intent to finance and distribute the sequel, which was newly scheduled to be released in summer of 2008. Production was scheduled to begin in April 2007 in Etyek, Hungary (near Budapest) and London, England. del Toro explored several concepts for the sequel, initially planning to recreate the classic versions of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Wolf Man. He and comic book creator Mike Mignola also spent a few days adapting the Almost Colossus story, featuring Roger the Homunculus. They then found it easier to create an original story based on folklore, because del Toro was planning Pan's Labyrinth, and Mignola's comics were becoming increasingly based on mythology. Later, del Toro pitched a premise to Revolution Studios that involved four Titans from the four corners of Earth—Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth—before he replaced the Titans with a Golden Army. Mignola described the theme of the sequel, "The focus is more on the folklore and fairy tale aspect of Hellboy. It's not Nazis, machines and mad scientists but the old gods and characters who have been kind of shoved out of our world."

 

Pacific Rim is a 2013 science-fiction monster film directed by del Toro. In February 2006, it was reported that Guillermo del Toro would direct Travis Beacham's fantasy screenplay, Killing on Carnival Row, but the project never materialized.[48] Beacham conceived Pacific Rim the following year. While walking on the beach near Santa Monica Pier, the screenwriter imagined a giant robot and a giant monster fighting to the death. "They just sort of materialized out of the fog, these vast, godlike things." He later conceived the idea that each robot had two pilots, asking "what happens when one of those people dies?" Deciding this would be "a story about loss, moving on after loss, and dealing with survivor's guilt", Beacham commenced writing the film. On May 28, 2010, it was reported that Legendary Pictures had purchased Beacham's detailed 25-page film treatment, now titled Pacific Rim.

 

On July 28, 2010, it was reported that del Toro would next direct an adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness for Universal Studios, with James Cameron producing.[51] When del Toro met with Legendary Pictures to discuss the possibility of collaborating with them on a film, he was intrigued by Beacham's treatment—still a "very small pitch" at this point. Del Toro struck a deal with Legendary: while directing At the Mountains of Madness, he would produce and co-write Pacific Rim; because of the films' conflicting production schedules, he would direct Pacific Rim only if At the Mountains of Madness were cancelled. Tom Cruise was attached to star in the Lovecraft adaptation. On March 7, 2011, it was reported that Universal would not proceed with At the Mountains of Madness because del Toro was unwilling to compromise on the $150 million budget and R rating. The director later reflected, "When it happened, this has never happened to me, but I actually cried that weekend a lot. I don't want to sound like a puny soul, but I really was devastated. I was weeping for the movie." The project collapsed on a Friday, and del Toro signed to direct Pacific Rim the following Monday. Del Toro spent a year working with Beacham on the screenplay, and is credited as co-writer. He introduced ideas he had always wished to see in the genre, such as a Kaiju birth and a Kaiju attack seen from a child's perspective. The film was shot using Red Epic cameras.[65] At first Guillermo del Toro decided not to shoot or convert the film to 3D, as the effect would not work due to the sheer size of the film's robots and monsters, explaining

 

I didn't want to make the movie 3D because when you have things that big ... the thing that happens naturally, you're looking at two buildings lets say at 300 feet [away], if you move there is no parallax. They're so big that, in 3D, you barely notice anything no matter how fast you move ... To force the 3D effects for robots and monsters that are supposed to be big you are making their [perspective] miniaturized, making them human scale.

 

It was later announced that the film would be converted to 3D, with the conversion taking 40 weeks longer than most. Del Toro said: "What can I tell you? I changed my mind. I'm not running for office. I can do a Romney." 

 

Del Toro envisioned Pacific Rim as an earnest, colorful adventure story, with an "incredibly airy and light feel", in contrast to the "super-brooding, super-dark, cynical summer movie". The director focused on "big, beautiful, sophisticated visuals" and action that would satisfy an adult audience, but has stated his "real hope" is to introduce the Kaiju and mecha genres to a generation of children. While the film draws heavily on these genres, it avoids direct references to previous works. Del Toro intended to create something original but "madly in love" with its influences, instilled with "epic beauty" and "operatic grandeur". The film was to honor the Kaiju and mecha genres while creating an original stand-alone film, something "conscious of the heritage, but not a pastiche or an homage or a greatest hits of everything". 

The director made a point of starting from scratch, without emulating or referencing any previous examples of those genres. He cautioned his designers not to turn to films like Gamera, Godzilla, or The War of the Gargantuas for inspiration, stating: "I didn't want to be postmodern, or referential, or just belong to a genre. I really wanted to create something new, something madly in love with those things. I tried to bring epic beauty to it, and drama and operatic grandeur."

 

Crimson Peak is a 2015 gothic romance film directed by  del Toro and written by del Toro and Matthew Robbins. The story, set in Victorian era England, follows an aspiring author who travels to a remote Gothic mansion in the English hills with her new husband and his sister. There, she must decipher the mystery behind the ghostly visions that haunt her new home. Del Toro and Robbins wrote the original spec script after the release of Pan's Labyrinth in 2006. It was sold quietly to Donna Langley at Universal. Del Toro planned to direct the film, but postponed the project to make Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and then again to work on The Hobbit films. Langley suggested that del Toro produce the film for another director, but he could not find one he deemed suitable. While directing Pacific Rim, del Toro developed a good working relationship with Legendary Pictures' Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni, who asked what he wanted to do next. Del Toro sent them his screenplays for a film adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness, a Western adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo, and Crimson Peak. The producers deemed the last of these "the best project for us, just the right size". Universal allowed del Toro to move the project to Legendary, with the caveat that they could put up money for a stake in the film.

 

Del Toro called the film a "ghost story and gothic romance". He has described it as "a very set-oriented, classical but at the same time modern take on the ghost story", and said that it would allow him to play with the genres' conventions while subverting their rules. He stated, "I think people are getting used to horror subjects done as found footage or B-value budgets. I wanted this to feel like a throwback."

 

Del Toro wanted the film to honor the "grand dames" of the haunted house genre, namely Robert Wise's The Haunting and Jack Clayton's The Innocents. The director intended to make a large-scale horror film in the tradition of those he grew up watching, such as The Omen, The Exorcist, and The Shining. He cited the latter as "another Mount Everest of the haunted house movie", praising the high production values and Stanley Kubrick's control over the large sets.

 

British playwright Lucinda Coxon was enlisted to rewrite the script with del Toro, in hopes of bringing it a "proper degree of perversity and intelligence", but she is not credited on the finished film.

 

The Shape of Water is a 2017 romantic fantasy drama film directed del Toro and written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. Set in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1962, the story follows a mute cleaner at a high-security government laboratory who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature. Filming took place in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, between August and November 2016.  The idea for The Shape of Water formed during del Toro's breakfast with Daniel Kraus in 2011, with whom he later co-wrote the novel Trollhunters. It shows similarities to the 2015 short film The Space Between Us. It was also primarily inspired by del Toro's childhood memories of seeing Creature from the Black Lagoon and wanting to see the Gill-man and Kay Lawrence (played by Julie Adams) succeed in their romance. When del Toro was in talks with Universal to direct a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon, he tried pitching a version focused more on the creature's perspective, where the Creature ended up together with the female lead, but the studio executives rejected the concept.

 

Del Toro set the film during the 1960s Cold War era to counteract today's heightened tensions:

 

"if I say once upon a time in 1962, it becomes a fairy tale for troubled times. People can lower their guard a little bit more and listen to the story and listen to the characters and talk about the issues, rather than the circumstances of the issues".  In an interview with IndieWire about the film, del Toro said:

 

This movie is a healing movie for me. ... For nine movies I rephrased the fears of my childhood, the dreams of my childhood, and this is the first time I speak as an adult, about something that worries me as an adult. I speak about trust, otherness, sex, love, where we're going. These are not concerns that I had when I was nine or seven."

 

The Shape of Water grossed $63.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $131.4 million in other countries, for a total of $195.2 million. The film had received a universally favorable response from critics and audiences. 

 

Pinocchio is an upcoming stop-motion animated musical dark fantasy film co-written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, based on Gris Grimly’s design from his 2002 edition of the 1883 Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It was written from a screenplay by del Toro, Gris Grimly, Patrick McHale and Matthew Robbins and a story by del Toro and Robbins. The film marks the animated feature film directorial debut of Guillermo del Toro. In 2008, Guillermo del Toro announced that his next project, a darker adaptation of the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, was in development. He has called Pinocchio his passion project, stating that: "no art form has influenced my life and my work more than animation and no single character in history has had as deep of a personal connection to me as Pinocchio", and "I've wanted to make this movie for as long as I can remember". On February 17, 2011, it was announced that Gris Grimly and Mark Gustafson would co-direct a stop motion animated Pinocchio film written by Guillermo del Toro and Matthew Robbins based by Grimly's designs, with del Toro producing along with The Jim Henson Company and Pathé. On May 17, 2012, del Toro took over for Grimly. On February 2012, Del Toro released some concept arts with the designs of Pinocchio, Geppetto, the Talking Cricket, Mangiafuoco and the Fox and the Cat. On July 30, 2012, it was announced that the film would be produced and animated by ShadowMachine.

 

On January 23, 2017, Patrick McHale was announced to co-write the script with del Toro. On August 31, 2017, del Toro told IndieWire and at the 74th Venice International Film Festival that the film need a budget increase of $35 million more dollars or it would be cancelled. On November 8, 2017, he reported that the project was not happening, because no studios were willing to finance it.[9] At one point, Matthew Robbins considered making the movie as a 2D-animated film with French artist Joann Sfar to bring the costs down, but del Toro eventually decided that it had to be stop-motion, even if the higher budget made it harder get greenlighted. However, on October 22, 2018, it was announced that the film had been revived, with Netflix acquiring it. 

 

So that's his  film history as a director let's get into some other aspects of his life!!

He was married to Lorenza Newton, cousin of Mexican singer Guadalupe Pineda. They have two children. He started dating Lorenza when both were studying at the Instituto de Ciencias in Guadalajara. Del Toro and Newton separated in early 2017, and divorced in September of the same year. He maintains residences in Toronto and Los Angeles, and returns to Guadalajara every six weeks to visit his family.

 

He also owns two houses devoted exclusively to his collection of books, poster artwork and other belongings pertaining to his work. He explains, "As a kid, I dreamed of having a house with secret passages and a room where it rained 24 hours a day. The point of being over 40 is to fulfill the desires you've been harboring since you were 7."

 

Politics Edit

In a 2007 interview, del Toro described his political position as "a little too liberal". He pointed out that the villains in most of his films, such as the industrialist in Cronos, the Nazis in Hellboy, and the Francoists in Pan's Labyrinth, are united by the common attribute of authoritarianism. "I hate structure. I'm completely anti-structural in terms of believing in institutions. I hate them. I hate any institutionalised social, religious, or economic holding."

 

Religion Edit

Del Toro was raised Roman Catholic. In a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose, he described his upbringing as excessively "morbid," saying, "I mercifully lapsed as a Catholic ... but as Buñuel used to say, 'I'm an atheist, thank God.'" Though insisting that he is spiritually "not with Buñuel" and that "once a Catholic, always a Catholic, in a way." He concluded, "I believe in Man. I believe in mankind, as the worst and the best that has happened to this world." He has also responded to the observation that he views his art as his religion by saying, "It is. To me, art and storytelling serve primal, spiritual functions in my daily life. Whether I'm telling a bedtime story to my kids or trying to mount a movie or write a short story or a novel, I take it very seriously." Nevertheless, he became a "raging atheist" after seeing a pile of human fetuses while volunteering at a Mexican hospital. He has claimed to be horrified by the way the Catholic Church complied with Francoist Spain, down to having a character in his film quote what actual priests would say to Republican faction members in concentration camps.[66] Upon discovering the religious beliefs of C.S. Lewis, Del Toro has stated that he no longer feels comfortable enjoying his work, despite having done so beforehand. He describes Lewis as "too Catholic" for him, despite the fact that Lewis was never a Catholic.

 

However, Del Toro isn't entirely disparaging of Catholicism, and his background continues to influence his work. While discussing The Shape of Water, Del Toro discussed the Catholic influence on the film, stating, "A very Catholic notion is the humble force, or the force of humility, that gets revealed as a god-like figure toward the end. It's also used in fairy tales. In fairy tales, in fact, there is an entire strand of tales that would be encompassed by the title 'The Magical Fish.' And [it's] not exactly a secret that a fish is a Christian symbol." In the same interview, he still maintained that he does not believe in an afterlife, stating "I don't think there is life beyond death, I don't. But I do believe that we get this clarity in the last minute of our life. The titles we achieved, the honors we managed, they all vanish. You are left alone with you and your deeds and the things you didn't do. And that moment of clarity gives you either peace or the most tremendous fear, because you finally have no cover, and you finally realize exactly who you are."

 

In 2010, del Toro revealed that he was a fan of video games, describing them as "the comic books of our time" and "a medium that gains no respect among the intelligentsia". He has stated that he considers Ico and Shadow of the Colossus to be masterpieces.

 

He has cited Gadget Invention, Travel, & Adventure, Cosmology of Kyoto, Asteroids and Galaga as his favorite games.

 

Del Toro's favorite film monsters are Frankenstein's monster, the Alien, Gill-man, Godzilla, and the Thing. Frankenstein in particular has a special meaning for him, in both film and literature, as he claims he has a "Frankenstein fetish to a degree that is unhealthy", and that it's "the most important book of my life, so you know if I get to it, whenever I get to it, it will be the right way". He has Brazil, Nosferatu, Freaks and Bram Stoker's Dracula listed among his favourite films.

 

Del Toro is also highly interested in Victorian culture. He said: "I have a room of my library at home called 'The Dickens room'. It has every work by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins and many other Victorian novelists, plus hundreds of works about Victorian London and its customs, etiquette, architecture. I'm a Jack the Ripper aficionado, too. My museum-slash-home has a huge amount of Ripperology in it".

 

Father's 1997 kidnapping Edit

Around 1997, del Toro's father, Federico del Toro Torres, was kidnapped in Guadalajara. Del Toro's family had to pay twice the amount originally asked for as a ransom; immediately after learning of the kidnapping, fellow filmmaker James Cameron, a friend of Del Toro since they met during the production of 1993's Cronos, withdrew over $1 million in cash from his bank account and gave it to Del Toro to help pay the ransom. After the ransom was paid, Federico was released, having spent 72 days kidnapped; the culprits were never apprehended, and the money of both Cameron and Del Toro's family was never recovered. The event prompted del Toro, his parents, and his siblings to move abroad. In a 2008 interview with Time magazine, he said this about the kidnapping of his father: "Every day, every week, something happens that reminds me that I am in involuntary exile [from my country]."

 

Del Toro has directed a wide variety of films, from comic book adaptations (Blade II, Hellboy) to historical fantasy and horror films, two of which are set in Spain in the context of the Spanish Civil War under the authoritarian rule of Francisco Franco. These two films, The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, are among his most critically acclaimed works. They share similar settings, protagonists and themes with the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, widely considered to be the finest Spanish film of the 1970s.

 

Del Toro views the horror genre as inherently political, explaining, "Much like fairy tales, there are two facets of horror. One is pro-institution, which is the most reprehensible type of fairy tale: Don't wander into the woods, and always obey your parents. The other type of fairy tale is completely anarchic and antiestablishment."

 

He is close friends with two other prominent and critically praised Mexican filmmakers Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu. The three often influence each other's directorial decisions, and have been interviewed together by Charlie Rose. Cuarón was one of the producers of Pan's Labyrinth, while Iñárritu assisted in editing the film. The three filmmakers, referred to as the "Three Amigos" founded the production company Cha Cha Cha Films, whose first release was 2008's Rudo y Cursi.

 

Del Toro has also contributed to the web series Trailers from Hell.

 

In April 2008, del Toro was hired by Peter Jackson to direct the live-action film adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. On May 30, 2010, del Toro left the project due to extended delays brought on by MGM's financial troubles. Although he did not direct the films, he is credited as co-writer in An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies.

 

On December 1, 2008, del Toro expressed interest in a stop-motion remake to Roald Dahl's novel The Witches, collaborating with Alfonso Cuarón. On June 19, 2018 it was announced that Del Toro and Cuarón would instead be attached as Executive Producers on the remake with Robert Zemeckis helming the project as Director and Screenwriter.

 

On June 2, 2009, del Toro's first novel, The Strain, was released. It is the first part of an apocalyptic vampire trilogy co-authored by del Toro and Chuck Hogan. The second volume, The Fall, was released on September 21, 2010. The final installment, The Night Eternal, followed in October 2011. Del Toro cites writings of Antoine Augustin Calmet, Montague Summers and Bernhardt J. Hurwood among his favourites in the non-literary form about vampires.

 

On December 9, 2010, del Toro launched Mirada Studios with his long-time cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, director Mathew Cullen and executive producer Javier Jimenez. Mirada was formed in Los Angeles, California to be a collaborative space where they and other filmmakers can work with Mirada's artists to create and produce projects that span digital production and content for film, television, advertising, interactive and other media. Mirada launched as a sister company to production company Motion Theory.

 

Del Toro directed Pacific Rim, a science fiction film based on a screenplay by del Toro and Travis Beacham. In the film, giant monsters rise from the Pacific Ocean and attack major cities, leading humans to retaliate with gigantic mecha suits called Jaegers. Del Toro commented, "This is my most un-modest film, this has everything. The scale is enormous and I'm just a big kid having fun." The film was released on July 12, 2013 and grossed $411 million at the box office.

 

Del Toro directed "Night Zero", the pilot episode of The Strain, a vampire horror television series based on the novel trilogy of the same name by del Toro and Chuck Hogan. FX has commissioned the pilot episode, which del Toro scripted with Hogan and was filmed in Toronto in September 2013. FX ordered a thirteen-episode first season for the series on November 19, 2013, and series premiered on July 13, 2014.

 

After The Strain's pilot episode, del Toro directed Crimson Peak, a gothic horror film he co-wrote with Matthew Robbins and Lucinda Cox. Del Toro has described the film as "a very set-oriented, classical but at the same time modern take on the ghost story", citing The Omen, The Exorcist and The Shining as influences. Del Toro also stated, "I think people are getting used to horror subjects done as found footage or B-value budgets. I wanted this to feel like a throwback." Jessica Chastain, Tom Hiddleston, Mia Wasikowska, and Charlie Hunnam starred in the film. Production began February 2014 in Toronto, with an April 2015 release date initially planned. The studio later pushed the date back to October 2015, to coincide with the Halloween season.

 

He was selected to be on the jury for the main competition section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

 

Del Toro directed the Cold War drama film The Shape of Water, starring Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, and Michael Shannon.

 

Filming began on August 15, 2016 in Toronto, and wrapped twelve weeks later.

 

On August 31, 2017, the film premiered in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival, where it was awarded the Golden Lion for best film, making Del Toro the first Mexican director to win the award. The film became a critical and commercial success and would go on to win multiple accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Picture, with del Toro winning the Academy Award for Best Director.

 

Del Toro collaborated with Japanese video game designer Hideo Kojima to produce P.T., a video game intended to be a "playable trailer" for the ninth Silent Hill game, which was cancelled. The demo was also removed from the PlayStation Network.

 

At the D23 Expo in 2009, his Double Dare You production company and Disney announced a production deal for a line of darker animated films. The label was announced with one original animated project, Trollhunters. However, del Toro moved his deal to DreamWorks in late 2010. From 2016 to 2018, Trollhunters was released to great acclaim on Netflix and "is tracking to be its most-watched kids original ever".

 

In 2017, Del Toro had an exhibition of work at the Minneapolis Institute of Art titled Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters, featuring his collection of paintings, drawings, maquettes, artifacts, and concept film art. The exhibition ran from March 5, 2017, to May 28, 2017.

 

In 2019, del Toro appeared in Hideo Kojima's video game Death Stranding, providing his likeness for the character Deadman.

 

Upcoming projects Edit

In 2008, del Toro announced Pinocchio, a dark stop-motion film based on the Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, co-directed by Adam Parrish King, with The Jim Henson Company as production company, and music by Nick Cave. The project had been in development for over a decade. The pre-production was begun by the studio ShadowMachine. In 2017, del Toro announced that Patrick McHale is co-writing the script of the film. In the same year, del Toro revealed at the 74th Venice International Film Festival that the film will be reimagined during the rise of Benito Mussolini, and that he would need $35 million to make it. In November 2017, it was reported that del Toro had cancelled the project because no studios were willing to finance it. In October 2018, it was announced that the film had been revived, with Netflix backing the project. Netflix had previously collaborated with del Toro on Trollhunters. Many of the same details of the project remain the same, but with Mark Gustafson now co-directing rather than Adam Parrish King.

 

In December 2017, Searchlight Pictures announced that del Toro would direct a new adaptation of the 1946 novel Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, the screenplay of which he co-wrote with Kim Morgan. In 2019, it was reported that Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette and Rooney Mara had closed deals to star in the film, which went into production in January 2020.

 

https://aznmodern.com/2017/10/10/13-facts-guillermo-del-toro-may-not-know/

 

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/all-guillermo-del-toro-movies-ranked-by-tomatometer/

 

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OUR YOUTUBE

#78 - The Hinterkaifeck Murders

   Sometime on the evening of March 31, 1922, six people were killed at a deserted farm in Bavaria. Despite decades of investigations and more than 100 suspects, the case was never resolved. This would come to be known as the Hinterkaifeck murders. Tonight on the train we delve into the crazy that surrounds this case. Who did it? Why did they do it? Incest?  That is gross… But also… Yes. There are tons of crazy theories, websites, documentaries and articles that delve into this case. We used two main sources for this episode which are amazing resources for actual information and not just myth and conjecture. They are www.hinterkaifeck.net and www.hinterkaifeck-mord.de. both have incredible amounts of information and discussion. Also pictures cus we know you guys are sick and you like that creepy gross shit. So with all that out of the way… in the immortal words of Michael buffer… Let's get ready to ruuuuuuuummmmmmble!!!!

 

Kaifeck was a small settlement to the north of Waidhofen, around 50 miles north of Munich in Bavaria, Germany. A mile or so to the north-east of Kaifeck was the village of Grobern. Between them lay the Witches’ Wood. At the north-west corner of the Witches’ Wood stood an isolated farm. Colloquially it was called ‘Behind Kaifeck’, or Hinter Kaifeck in German. This is where our story takes place. Lets run through a timeline of events and then get into the craziness that surrounds the case. Also as a disclaimer we've done or best to sister fact from fiction with this case when it comes to what happened. There may be some things in this episode that are shaky and far as being factually correct as there is tons of information and misinformation on this whole case. Also much of this information was translated from german so there are some odd wordings.

 

The fact that the chronology does not end with the act, but on the contrary continues to this day, is due to the special fact that the case was never resolved and that it continues to concern people to this day.

 

The following is a detailed chronology of events from Hinterkaifeck as well as details on the people involved. Some of the details may seem tedious so bare with us! 

 

1849, November 27.

Birth of Cäzilia Sanhueter, later Gruber

 

1858, November 9th.

Birth of Andreas Gruber.

 

1874, 08/16.

Birth of Lorenz Schlittenbauer.

 

1877, May 14.

Cäzilia Sanhüter (later Gruber) married Josef Asam von Hinterkaifeck for the first time. Josef Asam received the property HK from his widowed father Johann Asam on April 24th, 1877, and a notarial marriage and inheritance contract was signed between Cäzilia and Josef Asam. After the marriage, Cäzilia Asam was co-owner of the property.

1886, April 14.

Wedding of Cäzilia (née Sanhüter, used Asam) and Andreas Gruber.

A possible further marriage of Cäzilia Asam / Gruber to a Josef Ostermeier, which was possibly only of short duration and which according to Leuschner (3rd edition) should have existed after the death of Josef Asam, can now be almost ruled out after appropriate research.

 

1899

Lorenz Schlittenbauer takes over his parents' farm in Gröbern.

This yard is about 500 meters from HK.

At an unknown point in time, LS becomes ´local guide´ in Gröbern.

 

1903

According to Lorenz Schlittenbauer (interrogation in 1931), 16-year-old Viktoria Gruber tells his first wife - Viktoria Schlittenbauer - that she was seduced / abused by her father.

 

1914, April 3rd.

Viktoria marries Karl Gabriel from Laag, and the Einödhof is assigned to her beforehand. Allegedly KG leaves Victoria after a short time and goes back to his parents. These are said to have sent him back to Hinterkaifeck. (Note: Unclear source, needs to be checked!)

 

1914, 12.12.

Karl Gabriel is killed in France near Neuville St. Vaast during World War I.

 

1915, January 9th.

Birth of Cäzilia Gabriel, the daughter of Karl and Viktoria Gabriel.

 

1915, May 28.

On May 28, 1915, the district court in Neuburg sentenced old Gruber to one year in prison for incest, his daughter Viktoria to one month.

 

1918, July 14th.

Viktoria Schlittenbauer, Lorenz Schlittenbauer's first wife, dies.

 

1918, Aug (?) - Dec (?)

Around this time, Schlittenbauer had an intimate relationship with Viktoria.

 

According to his information (during interrogation in 1931), LS had sexual intercourse with Viktoria Gabriel about five times, the first time about two weeks after the death of his wife.

Viktoria Gabriel literally “imposed herself” on him after his portrayal.

 

A statement by the neighbors Pöll and Sigl (April 5th, 22) guarantees that LS wanted to marry Viktoria - possibly during her pregnancy or after the birth of little Josef. The old Gruber had strictly refused this.

 

1919, 07.09.

Birth of little Joseph.

In the period from 09/13/1919 to 09/27/1919 Andreas Gruber had to go to prison for incest, Schlittenbauer testified against Gruber on 09/10/1919. At the urging of Victoria, he revokes his testimony on September 23, 1919 and also assumes paternity.

It remains to be seen whether LS or old Gruber was the father of little Josef.

 

1921, March 27.

The maid Kreszenz Rieger gives birth to a daughter in Hinterkaifeck.

 

1921, 7:05 .

Lorenz Schlittenbauer marries his second wife, Anna Dick (29) from Diepoltshofen, who brings a son Josef (8, born on March 31, 1913) into the marriage. Another 3 children she had before this marriage had already died. They had only known each other for 3 weeks, so it seems to have been an arranged marriage. From this marriage there are 5 children. Schlittenbauer has become debt-free this year and is building a certain wealth. Schlittenbauer's eldest daughter, Magdalena, also gets married that year and moves to Tierham.

 

1921

At the end of August, the maid Kreszenz Rieger gave notice. 

 

1922 (?) March (?)

Allegedly, about two weeks before the night of the murder, Pastor Haas found 700 gold marks in an envelope that had been in the confessional. The money is said to have been deposited by Viktoria Gabriel as a donation for the mission.

 

(Note: This issue first appeared in a report written down from memory by the police officer Xaver Meiendres in 1948. The truth of the matter - for example, as regards the temporal proximity to the later murders or the amount of the sum - is difficult to assess. The police officer Meiendres is first Was transferred to Hohenwart in 1931 and was not involved in the original investigation.)

 

1922, March 29.

At the age of only a few weeks, Anna and Loorenz Schlittenbauer's first daughter probably dies of sudden infant death and is born on March 29th. buried. In the church register, "whooping cough" is found as the cause of death.

 

1922, March 30th

In the morning Andreas Gruber discovers that the lock of the engine house has been broken into. However, through this attached house there is no access to the stable or barn behind it.

There are also traces of an attempted break-in on the door to the feed room.

 

On the way into the forest, Gruber meets Lorenz Schlittenbauer at 11 o'clock and tells him about the break-in or attempted break-in and a trail in the snow that leads to the farm but not back. Shortly afterwards, Gruber meets the farmer Kaspar Stegmair from Gröbern and tells him about it.

 

It is said that shortly before the crime, either Viktoria (statement 1951 Sophie Fuchs, classmate of Cilli) or her mother (statement Sophie Fuchs 1984 and notes in the files) ran away in desperation at night. The woman was found crying on the couple. The next morning Cilli was very tired at school and when asked by the teacher why she was doing this, she told them about this incident. During this search, a current edition of the Münchner Zeitung is said to have been found, which so unsettled Andreas Gruber that he asked the postman Mayr on the following day whether anyone in the area was getting this newspaper. That was not the case.

 

1922, March 31.

In the morning of that day, Andreas Gruber and Viktoria Gabriel are said to have gone shopping in Schrobenhausen. Gruber is said to have reported inexplicable nocturnal noises in the attic in a hardware store and a cattle that was untied / got rid of at night. Supposedly Viktoria also reports about it in another store.

(Note: Neither the date of these purchases nor the exact circumstances are certain. Apparently there are only statements about it ´of hearsay´ by Johann Krammer and Wenzeslaus Bley from 1930.)

 

At 4.30 p.m. the new maid Maria Baumgartner, accompanied by her sister Franziska Schäfer, arrives in Hinterkaifeck. After an hour the sister leaves the yard.

 

1922, March 31st, probably between 7.30pm and 9pm / Friday

An unknown perpetrator kills Viktoria first, then her mother, then her father and then her daughter (order assumed / reconstructed) with a so-called Reuthaue (probably in the barn).

Then he kills the 44-year-old maid Maria Baumgartner with the same weapon in the maid's room and then kills little Josef in Viktoria's room.

The murder weapon comes - secured by the testimony of the former Hinterkaifeck farmhand Georg Siegl - from the possession of the Gruber.

 

1922, April 1st. / Saturday

Little Cäzilia is missing at school. The coffee representatives Hans and Eduard Schirovsky do not meet anyone in Hinterkaifeck during a visit (approximately between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m.).

Late in the evening / at night, the carpenter Michael Plöckl walks past the HK property. He is blinded by a stranger with a flashlight. A fire is burning in the oven.

 

It is uncertain to what extent the animals were looked after and the cows milked until the bodies were discovered.

 

1922, April 2nd. / Sunday

friends of Victoria want to pick them up for church service, but find Hinterkaifeck abandoned.

[Note: This issue appears for the first time in Hecker's Donaukurier series and is otherwise not proven]

 

The Grubers are missing in the church. A son of the farmer Sigl from Rachelsbach wants to buy lard at HK and doesn't meet anyone there.

 

1922, April 3rd. / Monday

The postman Josef Mayer reports in 1952: “As usual, I put the newspaper in the kitchen window. The only thing that struck me was that I didn't see the pram in the kitchen as it usually was when I walked this way. The kitchen door itself was half open. I would also like to say that I watched the child, who always rocked himself in the car, on my deliveries through the kitchen window. "

 

1922, 04.04. / Tuesday

The fitter Albert Hofner arrived in HK on Tuesday, 04/04/22 at around 9:00 a.m. to repair the cylinder head gasket on the 4 hp diesel engine. Before that, he talked to Mayor Greger in Wangen for about 30 minutes and informed him that he was on his way to HK.

 

Since the garden door (presumably on the house garden) was locked, he went around the house to check on the residents. There he found the back door locked, looked through the kitchen and stall windows and heard the barking of a dog (inside the house) and the roar of the cattle.

Afterwards he waited about an hour near the house garden under an apple tree (west side) for the HKer to return. In the meantime he whistled through his fingers a few times to attract attention.

Because he couldn't wait any longer, he gained access to the engine shed on the north side of the building and repaired the engine there for about 4.5 hours. He testified that he sang and whistled while he was working and then carried out a test run of the engine to draw attention to himself.

 

Then he locked the door of the engine hut and then went through the house garden into the courtyard again.

Only now did he notice that the “barn door in all directions” was open. He came within ten feet of the open door but did not enter the building. Then he walked along the house to the front door. At the front door he found the barking dog tied up. The front door was locked now too.

 

Comment on the dog: The yellow Spitz is described as a “good and watchful dog” (Pöll) or “a very watchful dog” (Sigl), “who was locked in the stable every evening” (Sigl). On 04/04/1922 the witnesses found the dog in the stable, but with one injured eye, he was disturbed and aggressive towards anyone who approaches him. After the death of the Hinterkaifecker, the dog comes to Laag because it finds a new home there with the father of a Jakob Gabriel (Karl Gabriel Sr.?), According to the Augsburg files.

 

Hofner went back through the house garden to his bicycle, which he must have parked on the north side of the building, and left around 2.30 p.m. via Gröbern, where he informed the sledge-builder daughters Viktoria and Maria that the engine had been made usable and that it was open Hinterkaifeck nobody was to be found. Johann (16) and Schlittenbauer's stepson Josef Dick (9 yrs., Schoolmate of Cäzilia), are then sent by Lorenz Schlittenbauer about 250 meters to the Hinterkaifeck farm, they do not meet anyone and return home.

 

Meanwhile, Hofer continues to Kaifeck to see Blasius Lebmeier. On the way back, Hofer reported to Mayor Greger in Wangen that the HKer's engine had been successfully repaired. At 5:30 p.m. he then went home. He reached Pfaffenhofen around 7 p.m. in the evening.

 

Based on the statements made by the fitter, it can therefore be assumed that a person was either already in the yard at the time the fitter arrived, or only from the south side while the fitter was busy repairing the engine has entered the building. According to this, this person must have led the dog from the stable outside to the front door during the repair time between approx. 10 a.m. to approx. 2:30 p.m. and tied it there and opened the western town gate. After the fitter left at around 2.30 p.m., the dog was led back into the stable and the barn gate was again barricaded from the inside. So the three men Schlittenbauer, Pöll and Sigl found the building around 5 p.m.

 

When Lorenz Schlittenbauer's two sons returned from Hinterkaifeck after 3:30 p.m. without result, Lorenz Schlittenbauer went to Hinterkaifeck together with his neighbors Michael Pöll and Jakob Sigl and his sons Johann and Josef Dick. The men enter the barn. The sons stay outside in the yard. The three of them enter the building through the open door to the former engine house (note: not to be confused with the attached engine house!), The next door to the barn is locked and must be broken into. Four bodies are then discovered in the barn. Lorenz Schlittenbauer continues alone through the stable, while Pöll and Sigl leave the barn and go through the inner courtyard to the front door.

 

In the bedroom and in the maids' room they find the other corpses of little Joseph and the strange maid.

 

After finding the bodies, Pöll and Sigl leave the crime scene with Josef Dick. Schlittenbauer waits in the house for the police to arrive.

 

Mayor Greger from Wangen is notified and notifies the Hohenwart Gendarmerie.

Another Groeberner is sent to Waidhofen to call the police in Schrobenhausen.

 

Onlookers visit the crime scene.

 

6:00 p.m.: The police from Hohenwart and Mayor Greger from Wangen arrive.

 

18: 15h: A telephone message reaches the Munich criminal police.

 

The police from Schrobenhausen arrive in Hinterkaifeck. She locks the crime scene. Onlookers can no longer enter and visit the murder site at will.

 

9:30 p.m.: The Kripo drive from Munich to Hinterkaifeck begins, the six officers (two of them dog handlers) arrive in Gröbern after midnight and go to the house of Mayor Greger.

 

22:00: The court commission from Schrobenhausen arrives, but does not stay until the criminal investigation department from Munich arrives.

 

1922, April 5th. / Wednesday

In the early morning, the police officers from Munich go to the crime scene. There the first interrogations take place (Schlittenbauer, Pöll, Sigl, Franziska Schäfer (sister of Maria Baumgartner), Cäzilia Starringer, Bernhard Gruber). The five crime scene photos are taken. A possibly prepared crime scene sketch has not been preserved.

 

1922, April 6th. and 07.04. / Thursday and Friday

On a provisional table in the courtyard of the Hinterkaifeck estate, the Neuburg Regional Court doctor Dr. Johann Bapt. Aumüller autopsied the six victims. Viktoria Gabriel, Cäzilia Gruber and Cäzilia Gabriel will be autopsied on Thursday, Andreas Gruber, little Josef and Maria Baumgartner on Friday. (Note: A record of this autopsy cannot be found in the files still preserved today.)

 

1922, April 8th. / Saturday

The transfer of the 6 victims in their coffins from Hinterkaifeck to Waidhofen did not take place until the morning of April 8, 1922 (according to J. Ludwig Hecker 1951, who in turn quotes a contemporary witness).

The victims are buried in Waidhofen with great sympathy from the population. The Schrobenhausener Wochenblatt writes about the funeral in the edition of April 11, 1922 as follows:

 

“After the judicial commission released the bodies of the six murdered after the dissection, the burial of the six victims could take place on Saturday. The number of participants who wanted to give the murdered their last escort was extremely numerous. 3,000 people came from near and far. It was a harrowing sight when the bridge wagon with the six coffins drove up, accompanied by the entire school youth.After Pastor Haas had made the funeral at the southern entrance of the cemetery, the unfortunate victims of the crime were taken into a mass grave, adults on the right and left, the two children in the middle. In moving words, Rev. Haas described the biblical story of Cain and Abel, what is terrible in God's eyes, and how only a person who has no more faith in God in his heart can allow himself to be carried away to such a terrible deed because one did not shrink back from murdering innocent children. Immediately after the funeral, the first St. Soul service for the murdered in the church. It turned out to be too small to hold all those who suffer. "

 

1922, June 7th.

The district court of Schrobenhausen is dealing with the question of whether the Hinterkaifeck inheritance belongs to the Gruber family or the Gabriel family. One of the heirs, Bernhard Gruber - Andreas' brother - has lived and managed Hinterkaifeck since the deed. The two families in dispute finally agree (out of court) that the Gabriel family can buy the property from the Gruber heirs at special conditions. The Gabriel family seems to have been interested in the acquired agricultural land and less in the buildings.

 

1923, February / March

Karl Gabriel senior and his sons tear down the property with the help of neighbors. The well-hidden murder weapon - smeared with blood - and a rusted pocket knife are discovered.

An - allegedly bloody - “band iron” is also found, which is not mentioned later.

Parts of the building are being transported away for further use.

 

1925, April 5th,

the teacher Hans Yblagger meets Lorenz Schlittenbauer at the ruins, who bent forward on the cellar stairs and looked into the cellar. (The basement and foundation walls were still there). Schlittenbauer reacted very shocked and said something hitherto unknown: Allegedly, attempts were made to dig one or two holes near the place where the corpses were found, perhaps to bury the corpses in them.

 

1926

Fire at Schlittenbauer, which also burns papers that are related to Hinterkaifeck. According to a later testimony of Schlittenbauer, these papers also supposedly included the document in which Victoria Gabriel waived maintenance for her son Josef. The fire damage is fully covered by the insurance.

 

1931, March 30.

After some suspicions against Schlittenbauer have arisen, he is interrogated in Munich. This “second interrogation” reveals a number of contradictions, but these do not give the police any reason to investigate any further.

 

1941, May 22.

Lorenz Schlittenbauer dies. 

 

A few other things leading up to the murder that were reported but some not substantiated: Six months before the attack, the family maid quit. It has been widely claimed that her reason for leaving was that she had heard strange sounds in the attic and believed the house to be haunted, but this is unsubstantiated; nothing in her statement to the police suggests this. Andreas Gruber found a strange newspaper from Munich on the property in March 1922. He could not remember buying it and thus Gruber initially believed that the postman had lost the newspaper. This was not the case, however, as no one in the vicinity subscribed to the paper.  Just days before the murders, Gruber told neighbours he discovered tracks in the fresh snow that led from the forest to a broken door lock in the farm's machine room.

 

Later during the night they heard footsteps in the attic, but Gruber found no one when he searched the building. Although he told several people about these alleged observations, he refused to accept help and the details went unreported to the police. According to a school friend of the seven-year-old Cäzilia Gabriel, the young girl reported that her mother Viktoria had fled the farm the night before the act after a violent quarrel and only hours later had been found in the forest.

 

 

Ok so now that the timeline is set, let's get into the murders themselves and the suspects. 

 

The victims of the murders are as follows:

 

Viktoria Gabriel, née Gruber (35)

(* February 6, 1887, † March 31, 1922)

 

Most of the threads run towards Victoria, so her introduction is put in front here. Viktoria was born on Hinterkaifeck and grew up on the farm with 2 older half-siblings. In 1914, at the age of 27, she married the farmer's son Karl Gabriel, 1.5 years her junior, who came from a hamlet just 1.5 km away. 9 months later, their daughter Cäzilia Gabriel was born, but Karl Gabriel had already died in World War I.

In 1919 Viktoria had an illegitimate child, Josef Gruber, who was 2.5 years old at the time of the crime.

 

 

 

Cäzilia Gruber, b. Sanhüter (72)

(* November 27, 1849, † March 31, 1922)

 

Cäzilia Gruber came from Gerolsbach and moved to Hinterkaifeck after her first marriage with Josef Asam. The two had 4 children together, of which only Martin Asam and Cäzilia Asam survived childhood.

After the death of her first husband in 1885, Cäzilia Gruber stood alone with her two children and, less than a year later, married the servant Andreas Gruber, who lived on the farm, who was 9 years younger. Viktoria Gabriel was the only daughter together who survived childhood.

 

 

 

Andreas Gruber (63)

(* November 9th, 1858, † March 31st, 1922)

 

Andreas Gruber came from Grainstetten and worked as a farmhand until he married his widowed employer Cäzilia Asam in 1886.

 

Andreas Gruber had an incestuous relationship with his daughter Viktoria. Both were convicted in a court case in 1915 .

 

 

Cäzilia Gabriel (7)

(* January 9th, 1915, † March 31, 1922)

 

The 7 year old "Cilli" was also murdered. She attended school in Waidhofen and grew up in Hinterkaifeck without a father.

 

 

 

Josef Gruber (2.5)

(* September 7th, 1919, † March 31st, 1922)

 

Even when he was born, Josef was the subject of arguments. The reason was publicly expressed doubts about his paternity. The widowed neighbor Lorenz Schlittenbauer wanted to marry Viktoria Gabriel and started an affair with her in 1918. When the marriage did not take place, but he was supposed to pay alimony as his biological father, he accused Andreas Gruber of being the real father of Josef. Because of several withdrawals of his testimony, Lorenz Schlittenbauer had become unsuitable as a witness and the subsequent process ended with an acquittal. Maintenance payments were settled out of court.

 

 

 

 

 

Maria Baumgartner (45)

(* October 2nd, 1876, † March 31, 1922)

 

The 45-year-old maid Maria Baumgartner arrived at Hinterkaifeck hours before the crime, in order to start her job on April 1, 1922. Her life has been characterized by exclusion and hard work. She was slightly mentally retarded and a shortened leg made walking difficult. Her sister said the following:  "My sister was a little mentally limited, had a short foot and therefore a limping gait" . That was probably one of the reasons why she was passed around and had not been employed for weeks after Candlemas. The position in Hinterkaifeck was ultimately arranged through a Verdinger.

 

It appears that in the late evening, Viktoria Gabriel, her seven-year-old daughter Cäzilia, and her parents Andreas and Cäzilia, were lured to the family barn through the stable, where they were murdered, one at a time. The perpetrator (or perpetrators) used a Reuthaue, which is similar to an adze. No murder weapon was available between April 1922 and February 1922. But it was so close: in the false floor in the attic. There, under a board, the blood-smeared Reuthaue was found just as the yard was being torn down. The examination in forensic medicine had shown that it was the murder weapon; in addition to blood, hair from humans and animals had also been found on it.

 

The tool itself had some noticeable properties that were consistent with the injury patterns. Prosecutor Ferdinand Renner will write the following about this peculiarity in his report in October 1923 : “This is an old blood-stained reed hoe in which the hoe is strangely attached to the handle by means of a screw. The screw protrudes about 1 cm above the screw nut. This screw apparently caused the previously puzzling injuries , pencil-sized, round holes on the skulls of the murdered people during the blows with the pick . The pick was found carefully hidden in the attic of the house. " The perpetrator moved into the living quarters, where - with the same murder weapon - he killed Josef, sleeping in his bassinet, and Baumgartner, in her bedchamber. They were all beheaded. 

 

Four days passed between the murders and the discovery of the bodies. On April 1, coffee sellers Hans Schirovsky and Eduard Schirovsky arrived in Hinterkaifeck to place an order. When no one responded to the knocks on the door and the window, they walked around the yard but found no one. They only noticed that the gate to the machine house was open before they decided to leave. Cäzilia Gabriel was absent without excuse for the next few days of school and the family failed to show up for Sunday worship.

 

Assembler Albert Hofner went to Hinterkaifeck on April 4 to repair the engine of the food chopper. He stated that he had not seen any of the family and had heard nothing but the sounds of the farm animals and the dog inside the barn. After waiting for an hour, he decided to start his repair, which he completed in roughly 4.5 hours.

 

Around 3:30 PM, Schlittenbauer sent his son Johann  and stepson Josef  to Hinterkaifeck to see if they could make contact with the family. When they reported that they did not see anyone, Schlittenbauer headed to the farm the same day with Michael Pöll and Jakob Sigl. Entering the barn, they found the bodies of Andreas Gruber, his wife Cäzilia Gruber, his daughter Viktoria Gabriel, and his granddaughter Cäzilia, murdered in the barn. Shortly after, they found the chamber maid, Maria Baumgartner, and the youngest family member, Viktoria's son Josef, murdered in the home.

 

Inspector Georg Reingruber and his colleagues from the Munich Police Department investigated the killings. Initial investigations were hampered by the number of people who had interacted with the crime scene, moved bodies and items around, and even cooked and ate meals in the kitchen. The day after the discovery of the bodies, court physician Johann Baptist Aumüller performed the autopsies in the barn. It was established that a mattock was the most likely murder weapon, though the weapon itself was not at the scene. Evidence showed that the younger Cäzilia had been alive for several hours after the assault – she had torn her hair out in tufts while lying in the straw. The skulls of the victims were removed and sent to Munich, where they were further examined.

 

The police first suspected the motive to be robbery, and they interrogated travelling craftsmen, vagrants, and several inhabitants from the surrounding villages. When a large amount of money was found in the house, they abandoned this theory. It was clear the perpetrator(s) had remained at the farm for several days: someone had fed the cattle, eaten the entire supply of bread from the kitchen, and had recently cut meat from the pantry.

 

With no clear motive to be gleaned from the crime scene, the police began to formulate a list of suspects. Despite repeated arrests, no murderer has ever been found and the files were closed in 1955. Nevertheless, the last interrogations took place in 1986 before Kriminalhauptkommissar Konrad Müller retired.

 

Inconsistencies Edit

In the inspection record of the court commission, it was noted that the victims were probably drawn to the barn by restlessness in the stable resulting in noises from the animals. A later attempt, however, revealed that at least human screams from the barn could not be heard in the living area.

 

On the night after the crime, three days before the bodies were discovered, the artisan Michael Plöckl happened to pass by Hinterkaifeck. Plöckl observed that the oven had been heated by someone. That person had approached him with a lantern and blinded him, whereupon he hastily continued on his way. Plöckl also noticed that the smoke from the fireplace had a disgusting smell. This instance was not investigated and there were no investigations conducted to determine what had been burned that night in the oven.

 

On April 1 at 3 AM, the farmer and butcher Simon Reißländer, on the way home near Brunnen, saw two unknown figures at the edge of the forest. When the strangers saw him, they turned around so that their faces could not be seen. Later, when he heard of the murders in Hinterkaifeck, he thought it possible that the strangers might be involved.

 

In the middle of May 1927, a stranger was said to have stopped a resident of Waidhofen at midnight. He asked him questions about the murder and then shouted that he was the murderer before he ran into the woods. The stranger was never identified.

 

Let's get into the suspects now and saw you may have committed this insane crime.

 

Karl Gabriel:

 

This first one is kind of weird as he was reported to have died in the first world war in 1914. He was supposedly killed in a shell attack on Arras, France. There are also reports that his body was never found. After the murders, people began to speculate if he had indeed died in the war. Viktoria Gabriel had given birth to Josef illegitimately in her husband's absence. Two-year-old Josef was rumoured to be the son of Viktoria and her father Andreas, who had an incestuous relationship that was documented in court and known in the village. There are even reports from after the second world war that captives from the Schrobenhausen region who were released prematurely from Soviet captivity claimed that they had been sent home by a German-speaking Soviet officer who claimed to be the murderer of Hinterkaifeck. Later on, some of these men changed their stories which brought their credibility into question. Some theorized that the man who released these men was actually Karl Gabriel sauce there were witnesses that had claimed Gabriel had started he wanted to go to Russia after the first war. But then again, as early as April 1922, the police were investigating the death of Karl Gabriel. One wanted to rule out that he had returned and committed the sixfold murder.

 

Based on the death notification in the Schrobenhausener Wochenblatt dated December 29, 1914, the Central Office for War Losses and War Graves was contacted, which confirmed the burial of Karl Gabriel on May 2, 1922 in a French military cemetery.

 

Several war comrades testified to the death of Karl Gabriel. It seems that this theory is one of those false rumors and theories going around, even though it is a pretty cool premise.

 

Lorenz Schlittenbauer

 

Police interrogated Lorenz twice. Once shortly after the murders in 1922 and again in 1931. Schlittenbauer alternately recognized and revoked the paternity of Josef Gruber, who was born out of wedlock , because he had a relationship with the murdered Viktoria Gabriel in 1918. A marriage he wanted was prevented by Andreas Gruber .

 

In 1926 the house of the Schlittenbauer family was completely destroyed by fire. During this fire, the confirmation that was given to him by Viktoria Gabriel and freed him from all obligations towards Josef Gruber is said to be burned.

 

Since Jakob Sigl called Lorenz Schlittenbauer the murderer of Hinterkaifeck , the two of them came to an atonement negotiation , in which Jakob Sigl was sentenced to a payment of 40 marks. According to Allmystery, there is even said to have been a civil trial in which Sigl is said to have incited Lorenz Schlittenbauer's son, Johann Schlittenbauer, to perjury.

Lorenz Schlittenbauer appears in the files as a suspect from time to time. When Schlittenbauer and his friends came to investigate, they had to break a gate to enter the barn because all of the doors were locked. However, immediately after finding the four bodies in the barn, Schlittenbauer apparently unlocked the front door with a key and (suspiciously) entered the house alone.[3] A key to the house had gone missing several days before the murders, though it is also possible that Schlittenbauer, as a neighbor or as Viktoria's potential lover, might have been given a key. When asked by his companions why he had gone into the house alone when it was unclear if the murderer might still be there, Schlittenbauer allegedly stated that he went to look for his son Josef. Regardless of any of the above rumor, it is known that Schlittenbauer had disturbed the bodies at the scene, thus potentially compromising the investigation. For many years after, local suspicion remained on Schlittenbauer because of his strange comments, which were seen as indicating knowledge of details that only the killer would know. According to reports in the files for the case, local teacher Hans Yblagger discovered Schlittenbauer visiting the remains of the demolished Hinterkaifeck in 1925. Upon being asked why he was there, Schlittenbauer stated that the perpetrator's attempt to bury the family's remains in the barn had been hindered by the frozen ground. This was seen as evidence that Schlittenbauer had intimate knowledge of the conditions of the ground at the time of the murders, although being a neighbor and familiar with the local land, he may have been making an educated guess. Another speculation was that Schlittenbauer murdered the family after Viktoria demanded financial support for young Josef. Before his death in 1941, Schlittenbauer conducted and won several civil claims for slander against persons who described him as the "murderer of Hinterkaifeck".

 

The Gump Brothers

 

In 1941, an elderly neighbour, Kreszentia Mayer, made a deathbed confession, to her priest, that her brothers, Adolf and Anton Gump, were responsible for the Hinterkaifeck farm murders. Apparently Adolf, the eldest brother, had been in an intimate relationship with Viktoria and became violently angry when he found out about the incestuous relationship. It was claimed that Adolf and Anton had murdered Viktoria and Andreas as the result of this. However, they murdered the other household members to ensure that there would be no chance of witnesses that could reveal their crime.

 

This deathbed confession, of the brothers’ guilt, was not investigated until 11 years later. At this time, they found that Adolf had been dead for eight years and that Anton was an elderly pensioner, who unambiguously denied any involvement in the murders. Despite this, Anton was still arrested but later released without any charges, after spending three weeks in custody.

 

Peter Weber

 

In the winter of 1919/1920, Peter Weber worked as an unskilled worker in an ammunition plant in Desching near Kösching (Ingolstadt) for the builder Spreng . He shared his room with Josef Betz . According to Betz, Weber spoke of the secluded farm and even knew that it was owned by an elderly couple, who had their daughter and grandchildren living with them. Betz testified in court that Weber had suggested murdering Andreas for the family’s money but when Betz didn’t respond, Weber never spoke of it again. According to Betz, Weber is said to have traded in worn military clothing, women's clothing and tobacco in addition to his labor. The case was dropped and Weber was never convicted of the murders.

 

Karl S. and Andreas S.

 

In 1971, a woman named Therese T. wrote a letter citing an event in her youth: At the age of twelve, she witnessed her mother receiving a visit from the mother of the brothers Karl and Andreas S. The woman claimed that her sons from Sattelberg were the two murderers of Hinterkaifeck. The mother said, "Andreas regretted that he lost his penknife" in the course of the conversation. In fact, when the farm was demolished in 1923, a pocket knife was found that could not be clearly assigned to anyone. However, the knife could have easily belonged to one of the murder victims. This track was followed without result.  Kreszenz Rieger, the former maid of Hinterkaifeck, was certain she had already seen the penknife in the yard during her service.

 

The Bichler Brothers

 

The former maid Kreszenz Rieger worked from November 1920 to about September 1921 on Hinterkaifeck. She suspected the brothers Anton and Karl Bichler to have committed the murders. Anton Bichler had helped with the potato harvest on Hinterkaifeck and therefore knew the premises. Rieger said Bichler talked to her often about the Gruber and Gabriel family. Anton reportedly suggested that the family ought to be dead. The maid also emphasised in her interrogation that the farm dog, who barked at everyone, never barked at Anton. In addition, she reported speaking with a stranger through her window at night. The maid believed that it was Karl Bichler, the brother of Anton. She thought that Anton and Karl Bichler could have committed the murder together with Georg Siegl, who had worked at Hinterkaifeck and knew of the family fortune. Supposedly, Siegl had broken into the home in November 1920 and had stolen a number of items, though he denied it. He did state that he had carved the handle of the murder weapon when he was working at Hinterkaifeck and knew that the tool would have been kept in the barn passage. For his part Karl said the following about the accusations in his statement to police: The night from March 31st to April 1st, 22nd I stayed in the Bergmüller inn in Althegnenberg. Rehearsals had taken place repeatedly beforehand from a play organized by the master carpenter Peter in Althegnenberg, which was performed on April 9th ​​and 17th, in which I participated at Peter's insistence. I don't know whether a rehearsal was held in the night from March 31st to April 1st, in which I participated. But almost every day I went with the builder Michael Huber from Gut Lindahof after work around 6 1/2 a.m. with him in Althegnenberg to the Bergmüller's inn. Both Bergmüller and the local waitress “Tina” can confirm my information.

 

The murdered in Hinterkaifeck except the servant I have known personally. I helped with the potato harvest there in autumn 1919. The domestic conditions were so well known to me that I only knew about the living room, kitchen and stables. The other rooms were not known to me. It is correct that I knew that the murdered were wealthy and that they also had gold money , which I learned in the economy and from other people.

 

I found out about the murder from the newspaper. I have no suspicion of the perpetrator or accomplice or instigator.

The information held

before me, according to which I would have commented , -Anl. 2-

How about if one broke into Hinterkaifeck , one would have to put away the old Gruber and the women would give us the money, are untrue. I didn't need a statement like that, but I said that the money from the people behind the scenes would be fine, you wouldn't have to work anymore. Such remarks were not only made by me, but also by other people, said in particular the single butcher Andreas Kaspar von Waidhofen, 25 years old, once in the apartment of the master baker Lang in Waidhofen, “I would already know where the people from Hinterkaifeck get their money”. That I would have asked someone to steal the money with me in Hinterkeifeck does not correspond to the facts.

 

That I would have said, "I don't work anymore, I'm no longer so stupid that I get my hands dirty, it has to go that way and if I have to get my hands bloody," I deny, especially the statement that I will make my hands bloody. It is correct that I have stated that I no longer want to get my hands dirty. I wanted to express that I was getting on with the trade, back then with the potato trade.

 

It is true that I was interested in a means that could be used to paralyze a dog.

–Anl. 5-

I frequented the Gütlers Reil and Riedl in Waidhofen and I asked both of them whether they knew the means by which one could make a dog inactive. It was not true that I had asked the shepherd of my employer at the time, Josef Greppmeier, in Steinerskirchen about such a means. On the other hand, the community shepherd of Epenhofen near Schrobenhausen, credibly with the first name “Martin”, told me that he could paralyze any dog. I asked this shepherd to reveal the remedy to me; but he answered me: "not for 1000 M". To this day I have not had such a remedy in my hands and I do not know of any.

 

It cannot be explained to me that people are suspecting of murder or of inciting or aiding and abetting me, since there are still enough people in Waidhofen who have not worked all winter and drink in the inn almost every day without that they are wealthy or do business. So I would just like to refer to the person of von Pfaffenhofen aIIn the autumn of last year, the single shoemaker Josef Fleck or similar moved to Waidhofen, who also has another brother there who is a tailor. These two also socialize a lot with the butcher Bichler Michael, who z. Currently, works and lives at Unterbräu in Schrobenhausen. This shoemaker mentioned here is said to have bought a building site for 4000M in Waidhofen, although in reality he cannot have a 1000M fortune. From where he got the money to build is inexplicable to me. His brother, the tailor, is a person who always carries a revolver and a dagger with him.

 

In my opinion, Bichler is a rascal. He stole grain from his father and then sold it. I trust those named here to do this and I ask that the survey be initiated against them.

 

I firmly deny that I committed the murder, or participated in it in any way, or that I incited anyone to do it. Nobody approached me either to inquire about the situation in Hinterkaifeck.

 

I would like to mention that the Thaler brothers in Unterkaifeck are not clean either. You've also stolen. I also deny that I was in Schrobenhausen on April 3rd and 4th and asked a Mr. Buchernecker for a map there. I haven't come from the municipality of Althegnenberg since I started working at Gute Lindahof. All of the suspicions against me in this direction are untrue.

I cannot give any further information about the murder itself ”. Her goes on in the statement to discuss his criminal past and his brother Anton. The full statement can be found online. 

The Thaler family

 

There are many instances where the Thaler family had been brought up as suspects on the killings sometimes with a man named Wendelin Kaspar. Some of those reports are as follows: 

 

February 25, 1924

According to the testimony of an unknown witness but whose name is known to the police, Josef Thaler is said to have been interested in Viktoria Gabriel. A pick from Johann Gall is said to have been stolen some time before the murder in Hinterkaifeck and the Thaler brothers are said to have been suspected of having carried out this theft. After the murder, the "old Thaler" Hinterkaifeck would have liked to buy and it would have annoyed him that the court went to the Gabriels.

 

April 5, 1924

Josef Fuchs, dentist from Pfaffenhofen, is questioned.

At some point around this time the pastor of Waidhofen must also have testified, whose information, together with those of Josef Fuchs and Anton Strasser, initiated new investigations against the Thalers and Kaspars.

Fuchs tells of the rumor spread in Schrobenhausen and Waidhofen that Wendelin Kaspar was the culprit of Hinterkaifeck. Kaspar was gloomy and would leave the inn as soon as the conversation turned to the murder. He reacts passively to accusations from the perpetrator and does not defend himself.

These rumors could not be confirmed by the police, and those present who were given as witnesses could not testify to the incidents and conversations described.

 

May 23, 1924

The butcher Anton Strasser gives the police information that Wendelin Kaspar and Andreas Thaler senior, who were good friends before the murder. be referred to in the inns as the perpetrators of Hinterkaifeck; The Thaler brothers are also said to be involved in the murder.

Kaspar and Thaler suddenly became enemies after the murders. Wendelin and Andreas Kaspar were suddenly able to continue building, although construction had previously been stopped due to lack of money. It was also noticeable to him that it was precisely on this construction site that craftsmen were later paid with gold money. Kaspar also paid for flour and his daughter's trousseau in gold.

Essigkrug from Waidhofen had publicly described Kaspar as a murderer, whereupon a libel suit was pending.

 

March 3, 1925

An anonymous letter is sent in Augsburg, which also brings the Thalers into play as the perpetrator.

The letter arrives anonymously at the Augsburg city police on March 6th.

 

January 8, 1937

Statement by Josef Thaler in Augsburg. Thaler states that he has been questioned both as a witness and as a suspect in the Hinterkaifeck murder case since it was found. He was asked if he could name a perpetrator. He could not, he could only name those people who were suspected of being the perpetrators in the area. Thaler openly talks about the suspicion against him, his brothers and his father. And against Wendelin Kaspar. Thaler can give his father an alibi for the night of the crime and he doesn't trust his brothers to do the crime either.

Thaler wants to pursue a libel suit because of the renewed allegations.

Thaler also denies ever having been to Rieger's window.

On the day of the discovery, Thaler claims to have gone to Hinterkaifeck with Lebmeier, his father and his brother around 5 p.m. There they found 100 people from Gröbern and the surrounding area. They were free to move around the house and look at the bodies. The Thaler brothers took over night watch on the first night together with a farmer from Gröbern with the first name Josef until 4 a.m.

These three joined the judicial commission at the inspection after it arrived at around 11 p.m. In addition, the commission found a lot of coins in a wardrobe, whereupon they would have ruled out robbery. They had spent the night watch on a bench in front of the bakery. They weren't in the bakehouse itself, there were no traces of blood or burnt clothing to be seen. The night watch had no lamps with them.

Thaler also describes that there were rumors in the area about Lorenz Schlittenbauer, who was the father of the two-year-old Josef. And there were also rumors against Josef Gabriel. Thaler denies, however, that there was enmity between the Gabriels and the Hinterkaifeckern, the two families simply never met.

Thaler confirms the Gabriels' statement that none of the Gabriel family came to the farm for the first few hours after they were found. 

 

There are several more reports, interrogations, and accusations all the way up until at least the early 50s. Nothing ever came off all this as none of the Thalers were ever charged. 

 

Paul Müller(Mueller in american documents)

 

Paul Mueller is a suspected serial killer in america in the late 1800s and early 1900s. He has been put forth as the orientation of a series of axe murderer in the US during that time period. Author Bill James puts forth his theories in a book called The Man From The Train. He puts all the clues together and links various killings, including the infamous Villisca ax murders, together and links Mueller as the killer. He then brings up the similarities to Hinterkaifeck! The similar murders stopped around 1912. James believes that this is because Mueller believed the authorities were on to him and he left and went back to Europe. There are many similarities to the US crimes and Hinterkaifeck that lead James and many others to believe it could have been Mueller. Since of these include the fact that an entire family was murdered, the weapon used was similar to those used in the US, the blunt side of the weapon was also used in all the murders, the young girls bodies were treated differently, the bodies were stacked and covered, isolated farm houses, and all we're in walking distance to train stations.

 

There were well over 100 suspects questioned but these are generally postulated to be the most likely suspects. 

 

So who did it? Why did they do it? So many questions are out there still. Was someone living in the attic up until the murders? Did they start there until the bodies were found? So many other strange things went on its hard to tell what really happened.  There's a wealth of information on the website we mentioned earlier which is where a beast majority of this information came from. There is much to sift through and if you want to delve into this case more, which we highly recommend, Check out those websites. This is another case we still most likely never get an answer too. But it's a great case to research and head down rabbit holes!!

 

Movies: 

 

1922: https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?year=1922&title_type=feature&

 

German: https://screenrant.com/horror-movies-german-absolutely-terrifying/

#77 Creepy Australia

Episode 77

Creepy

Australia

G'day mates! Tonight on the Midnight Train we've decided to take another creepy trip! Last time we stayed stateside and headed to Texas, where they seem to have an inordinate amount of haunted bridges. This week we are heading to The Land Down Under! That's right Australia here we come. Not only can pretty much all the wildlife in Australia kill you… It's also chock full of creepy places as well! So, without further ado, throw another shrimp on the barbie, wrestle yourself a croc, pull out all the other Australian cliches you can, and take a trip with us to some of the creepiest, craziest places in Australia. No bridges… We promise!

 

     We'll start off with a nice refreshing swim...OF DEATH!!! Local legend states that at the Babinda boulders, aka The Devil's Pool, there is something sinister going on. Legend has it that a long time ago, when the Yidinji tribe lived in the Babinda Valley, there was a tremendous upheaval that created these unusual shaped Boulders. In the tribe was Oolana, a very beautiful young woman.  Also in the tribe was Waroonoo, a very old, wise and respected elder.

 

It was decided that these two should be given in marriage to one another, and so it was done.  Some time later, a wandering tribe came through the valley, and as was the friendly custom of the Yidinji, they made the strangers welcome, inviting them to stay.  In the visiting tribe was Dyga, a very handsome young man.  All eyes were upon him for his grace and beauty.  At first sight, Dyga and Oolana fell in love. Knowing full well that their desire for each other would never be permitted, they ran away.  Oolana knew she could now never return as she was rightfully married to Waroonoo.  They journeyed well up into the valley; spending wonderful, happy days together and they camped under Chooreechillum, near the water’s edge. The two tribes had been searching for them and it was at this spot, they came upon the two lovers.  The wandering tribesmen seized Dyga, forcing him away, calling how they had been shamed and how they would travel far away and never return.  The Yidinjis had taken hold of Oolana and were dragging her back, forcing her to return with them to the rest of the tribe.  Suddenly, she broke away and violently flung herself forward into the gentle waters of the creek, as she called and cried for Dyga to return to her, but the wandering tribe had gone, and with them her handsome lover. Would he ever return?  Just at the very instant Oolana struck the water, a tremendous upheaval occurred.  The land shook with terror and sorrow as Oolana cried for her lost lover to come to her.  Her anguished cries spilled out as rushing water came cascading over the whole area.  Huge boulders were thrown up and she disappeared into them.  Oolana seemed to become part of the stones as if to guard the very spot where it all happened. It is said that to this day her spirit resides at the Devil's Pool and lures young men to their deaths. Since 1959 almost 20 young men have died there. Is it a result of the restless siren spirit of Oolana or just a result of carelessness on behalf of these young men. As we are the Midnight Train, We'll go with the daunting spirit of a broken-hearted & scorned woman.

 

       Next up we'll take you to a place that kinda hits closer to home right now. We are heading to the North Head quarantine station. Not because of Covid… But because it's fucking haunted of course. First, Jeff's favorite, a bit of history. The Quarantine Station was established primarily to regulate the risk of disease importation through the migration of free and convicted Europeans, and the arrival of merchant shipping. Up until the 1830s, the majority of ships requiring quarantine were convict transports, and being under government contract, the somewhat informal proclamation of quarantine by the Governor of the day was easy to enforce. One reason for the introduction of formal statutory regulation for quarantine in NEw South Wales in 1832 was the increasing rate of free immigrant vessels entering port. The initial quarantine practice of housing the sick on board the vessel in which they arrived, was dispensed with after the experience with the long detention of the Lady Macnaghten in 1837, and the subsequent heavy demurrage claimed for that delay. After that time the sick were removed from their ship and housed ashore, while the ship was fumigated and scoured for return to the owner with the minimum delay. A consequence of this decision was the construction of permanent accommodation and storage buildings at the Quarantine Station at North Head. The alarming experiences of quarantine in 1837 and 1838 prompted a review in the colony of the organisation and conditions aboard immigrant ships. The final report, arising as a NSW initiative, pricked the sensitivities of the British emigration officials, but nevertheless had positive outcomes. The review indicated that there was insufficient checking of the health of the emigrants before boarding; there was insufficient concern with diet during the voyage, especially for the needs of children; and that the formula of three children equalling one adult when allocating food and berth space aboard required reconsideration, as it led to excessive number of children in cramped spaces, with inadequate food. The subsequent reorganisation of the system resulted in interviews and medical checks on would-be emigrants before embarking them; vaccination for smallpox of all emigrants; the signing of undertakings to follow the directions of the surgeon-superintendent on voyage and better definition of his role and powers; improvements in diet and hospital accommodation aboard; and moves to prevent overcrowding. The arrival of the Beejapore in 1853, with over one thousand passengers, at a time when the Quarantine Station could accommodate 150 persons, triggered a new building phase. As a temporary measure, the hulk Harmony was purchased and moored in Spring Cove as a hospital ship. The Beejapore was an experiment in trying to reduce migration costs by using two-deck vessels, and the outcome was judged not to be a success. Fifty-five people died during the voyage, and a further sixty two died at the Quarantine Station, from the illnesses of measles, scarlet fever and typhus fever.  As a result of this downturn between 1860 and 1879 only 138 immigrant vessels arrived [compared with 410 between 1840 and 1859], and of these 33 required cleansing at the Quarantine Station, but few required their passengers to be landed and accommodated. In the same period 29 merchant or naval vessels were quarantined, but again mainly for the cleansing of the ship rather than the landing of diseased crews. The run-down Quarantine Station had become unsuitable for passenger quarantine, and particularly for first and second class passenger accommodation, by the time the Hero was in need of quarantine for smallpox in 1872. The passengers were kept aboard the ship, because the station could not adequately house them. The inadequacy was further publicised during the quarantine of the Baroda in 1873, when first class passengers had to do their own washing. The growth of the other states also meant that shipping was more evenly distributed in terms of destination than had been the case in the nineteenth century. In the period 1901 to 1940, Sydney and Melbourne had roughly similar numbers of assisted immigrants (134,864 and 115,988 respectively), and the other States had, in combination, more immigrants than either Sydney or Melbourne, totalling 174,526. By 1958 there were 39 "first ports of entry" into Australia. Thirty-two sea ports had staff capable of carrying out quarantine inspections, ten ports were "landing places" for air entry; major quarantine stations with accommodation were established at five ports, and there were three minor quarantine stations at other Ports.

 

The impact of improved medical science, immunisation, and quarantine procedures in the twentieth century is perhaps shown most dramatically by the fact that though the post-WWII immigration was vastly more than had gone before, the number of ships or aeroplanes quarantined plummeted proportionately. Sydney received nearly 700,000 assisted immigrants between 1946 and 1980, or nearly double the number it had received between 1831 and 1940, yet only four ships were quarantined in that period and at least one of those was a tanker.

 

In all, between 1828 and 1984 at least 580 vessels were quarantined at the Quarantine Station. More than 13,000 people were quarantined at the station of whom an estimated 572 died and were buried there. Now with that compacted and somewhat confusing history out of the way, let's get into some creepiness.

 

    Since records were first kept, reports of the ghosts of the doctors and nurses returning to haunt the station have flooded in. The National parks and Wildlife Service regularly conducts a three hour ghost tour after sunset, where visitors are led by tour guides through the winding unlit streets and buildings of the North Head Quarantine Station.

 

Every building and open area on the site is believed to be haunted by at least one ghost. Visitors have reported seeing apparitions walking in front of their cars as they leave the site at night, as they are driving down North Head Scenic Drive. Psychics have claimed to have been led around the station by ghostly nurses, and long dead patients all still remaining within the confines of the complex. TV's Ghost Hunters Team visited the site and found enough evidence to suggest that the site is haunted by several different entities, who have remained at the site, but you know how we feel about those tools...

 

One of the more common accounts you may hear while on the ghost tours are that of the ghostly girl with blonde braids who occasionally holds a tourists hand and leads them along the pathways. Some visitors see her hiding behind bushes or even tugging at their jacket sleeve. Guests have said she speaks to them or sees her as a child on a tour, only to be told later that there were no children on their tour. In the Asian quarters visitors have reported seeing the ghost of a Chinese man dressed in authentic period robes.

 

Other paranormal experiences at North Head Quarantine Station include: lights turning themselves on and off in locked buildings, strange sounds and footsteps coming from the verandas, and the feeling of being touched by an unseen force.

 

Many people have felt uncomfortable and have frozen on the spot of the old cemetery where a lone gravestone now is the only remaining evidence of the hundreds of bodies buried below.

 

Several buildings on the site were destroyed by fire in 2001. One of the buildings was the station's original hospital. Several ghosts were seen here before the fire; these were either laying in the hospital beds, or wondering around the wards. There are plans in the future to reconstruct this building because of its historic importance, and of course, its haunted history as well. There is a corrugated-iron structure on the site that houses the station's shower block. Paranormal events here include: doors slamming shut, lights turning on and off, bangs against the walls, and the sounds of footsteps. There are many many stories from this place which is also now a hotel. There's tons more history and tales that you can find on your own but we must be moving along, now.

 

We head next to Uluru also known as Ayers Rock. Uluru/Ayers Rock, is a giant monolith, one of the tors (isolated masses of weathered rock) in the southwestern Northern Territory, in central Australia. It has long been revered by a variety of Australian Aboriginal peoples of the region, who call it Uluru. The rock was sighted in 1872 by explorer Ernest Giles and was first visited by a European the following year, when surveyor William Gosse named it for Sir Henry Ayers, a former South Australian premier. It is the world’s largest monolith. There's an ancient history to the rock. On the northern top of Uluru are a series of caves that are informally called “the Skull”. The Aborigine, the peoples of the Mala, or Hare Wallaby group (both the Pitjantjatjara and Yankuntjatjara belong to it) well, they believe that they represent the camp made by their ancestors in the Dreamtime, when they came to Uluru from the Haasts Bluff region, some 200 miles north, to initiate their youth. The Dreamtime is the era in which these forebearers created 'The Earth' through their adventures along trails that cross the desert. Many of these paths merge to crossroads at important features of the desert landscape, such as Uluru. The caves to the right of the Skull are said to mark the camps of the fathers and uncles of the initiates. In the uncles' camp lived the eagle chick, which would be used to provide feathers for this important ceremony. Other caves represent the camps that male elders, not involved in the ceremony, resided, and a series of flat rocks to the east, stand for the camp of the women. Whenever the tribes of the area gather at the Rock for these ceremonies, they still camp precisely in this pattern.

 In the northwest corner, separated from the main body of the Rock, is an immense pillar that locals call the Kangaroo Tail. To the Aborigine this is the ceremonial pole (naldawata) stolen from the midst of the Mala camp by a 'Devil Dingo'. The Dingo, a species of dog, is believed to have come to Australia with the aboriginals across land bridges and shallow seas that existed between Australia and Indonesia before the melting of the glaciers toward the end of the last ice age.

 

This particularly savage canine, who stole the ceremonial pole, had been sung into existence by the elders farther west in the mountains now called the Petermanns, and sent into the camp at Uluru to punish the Mala group for refusing to supply eagle feathers to their cousins. This devil dingo put the Mala, and their guests from the southwest side of Uluru, the Carpet Snake people, to flee. There are enormous writhe marks and paw-shaped caves at the base of Uluru that represent the escape route of the Hare Wallaby and Carpet Snake people, their panic quite legible in the rock. 

 

The Mala group are still aware of that devil dingo, which they believe dwells somewhere on the crest of Uluru. 

 

Then there's the stories of the curse of Uluru. While climbing the rock is now banned there are many stories of folks who went to see the sites and decided to bring a piece of Australia home with them only to be met with bad luck and misfortune. Steve Hill talks about his experience. He had taken a small rock from the site. Here's the short version found on an Australian website:  The moment I put it back, it felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders,” explains Steve Hill, who recently made a 3000km road trip from Canberra to return a small rock to Uluru. Hill, who pilfered the match box–sized rock from the base of the landmark inselberg in 2017, admits he was “a complete idiot for taking it in the first place”. In the weeks after, he claims, he was struck by a “long run of bad luck”, including car accidents and expensive repairs to his four-wheel-drive. He's not the only one to have stories like this.

 

“I wanted to take away some of your magic with me for the rest of my travels, for the rest of my life even. I realise it was wrong to do so, therefore I am sending it back to you. Forgive me for being foolish,” wrote one French tourist who returned a rock via mail in January 2014.

 

Another tourist wrote "To Australia, I'm so sorry I took this piece of Uluru. I wanted a piece of Australia to take home with me. This was the wrong thing to take. I hope Australia can forgive me and welcome me if I ever come back. signed, An Unwise Traveller" 

 

One British tourist wrote: "Things were good in my life before I took some of Ayers Rock home with me, but since then my wife has had a stroke and things have worked out terribly for my children – we have had nothing but bad luck."

 

The national park receives at least one package a day from remorseful rock thieves who are seeking to return pieces of the monument. In an even more bizarre twist, recent research indicates that 25 percent of those packages contain apology notes claiming that the stolen stone has brought misfortune upon its abductors; by returning it, they hope to undo the curse. While most of the returned pieces of Uluru are pocket-sized, officials once received a 70-pound chunk from a remorseful couple in South Australia, and packages have come from as far away as Germany.  So what to you guys think? Do you believe in curses? I don't need a rock or sand that bad! And now like Vanilla Icev were gonna keep on pursuing to the next stop.

 

The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA), known as ScreenSound Australia from 1999 to 2004, is Australia's audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of film, television, sound, radio, video games, new media, and related documents and artefacts. The collection ranges from works created in the late nineteenth century when the recorded sound and film industries were in their infancy, to those made in the present day. Doesn't seem spooky… Until you find out the building to which the Archive moved in 1984 was the home of the Australian Institute of Anatomy from 1931-84. Originally it held the anatomy collection of Sir Colin MacKenzie. A little more creepy. The Australian Institute of Anatomy was a natural history museum and medical research institute that was founded in 1931 and disbanded in 1985 located in Acton, Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory. MacKenzies collection included the heart of the celebrated Australian racehorse Phar Lap, Australian outlaw Ned Kelly's skull and a mummy from Papua New Guinea. MacKenzie became the founding director of the Institute on Anatomy, and on his death in 1938 his ashes were placed behind a commemorative plaque in the building's foyer. Buildings constructed during this phase were 'built to broaden national interest and establish the city as a centre of archives and collections'. The building housed human skeletons, animal specimens and artefacts, and was the site of scientific experiments. "The NFSA building is regarded by many ghost hunters or paranormal aficionados as not only one of the most haunted in Canberra, but also one of the most haunted in Australia," cryptonaturalist Tim the Yowie Man said.

 

"It's not because it houses spooky movies. The ghosts that are reported in the building stem from the period when it was the Institute of Anatomy." 

 

"During the '30s most of the research was on childhood nutrition; during the '40s when the war came that evolved to general nutrition, nutrition for the troops," Mr Kennedy said.

 

"In the '50s and '60s there was a liver dissection section and animal testing laboratory."

 

There have been many reported sightings of MacKenzie's ghost.

"It's one of the more extraordinary apparitions," he said."It's been described by some people like a genie out of a bottle.They're in the building in the late afternoon and they see an outline of an elderly man, dressed well, come out of the wall near where his ashes are.He just appears there, doesn't move much, and then suddenly sucks back into where the ashes are behind the wall." 

 

Another of the commonly reported ghost sightings is that of a little girl that would pop out through a grate in the old theatrette and make visiting school students laugh.

 

There have also been reports of poltergeist activity, particularly where the dissection laboratories used to be.

 

Since the NFSA moved in, that space has been used as an office with two sound recording booths.

 

"Quite often staff would have meetings in that room, and they would hear noises coming from the [recording booths] and they would see things flying around in there," Tim the Yowie Man said.

 

"All these tapes had fallen out of anti-gravity tape decks, which can't happen unless someone or something had forced them out."

 

A group of ghost hunters from the New South Wales south coast stayed overnight at the building ."They set up their equipment and it all went crazy," Mr Kennedy said. "One of the things ghosts or spirits apparently do is suck energy, so they'll suck the life out of batteries. They had six of these pieces of equipment set up in a row, and we all watched all of the batteries drain from full down to empty at the same time, which was pretty creepy."

 

Most of the reports of spooky activity come from NFSA staff, with an employee who worked there in the 1980s coming forward with an experience just last week.

 

"In the Film and Sound Archive it seems you don't need to be a true believer — you can be a sceptic, or sitting on the fence — to have an experience there," Tim the Yowie Man said.

 

"There just seems to be a higher-than-normal proportion there of really credible eyewitnesses seeing things they can't explain." 

 

Again these are just a few of the crazy stories floating around about this place and it bc send like a pretty cool haunted hotspot! And now like Fred Durst we're gonna keep rollin rollin rollin and head over to the Adelaide Gaol.

 

A brief history from the website states the following: Adelaide Gaol is one of the oldest remaining colonial public buildings in Adelaide and is the site of some of South Australia's more interesting, grisly past and important history of Adelaide. 

 

In 1840, George Strickland Kingston was commissioned to design Adelaide's new gaol. The architectural plans for Adelaide Gaol were based on the latest in European gaol designs and were said to be radical for the time.

 

The original cost estimate for Adelaide Gaol was £17,000, but by 1841 costs had already reached £16,000 with only half the planned works complete. The final bill was more than double the original quote and the expense of construction sent the fledgling colony of South Australia bankrupt.

 

As a result, Governor Gawler, who was considered responsible for this situation, was recalled to England and replaced by Governor Grey. Governor Grey halted work and Adelaide Gaol construction languished for over six years.

 

The full extent of Kingston's original design was never delivered, but there were all kinds of additions and modifications made to the Gaol during its 147 years of operation. In 1879, Adelaide Gaol was packed to capacity and the New Building was constructed using the prisoners as labour.

 

Approximately 300,000 prisoners passed through Adelaide Gaol during its working years and 45 people were executed. Their bodies are buried within the grounds of Adelaide Gaol.

 

The first public hanging took place in November 1840 while the site was still under construction.

 

It was decided in the early 1980s that Adelaide Gaol would be closed and on 4 February 1988, was officially decommissioned.

 

 Here's a little more on the prison. On Christmas Eve, 24 December 1840, the first prisoners, some fourteen debtors, were transferred from the old temporary gaol to occupy the first yard to be completed at the new Adelaide Gaol. Remaining prisoners at the old gaol were transferred in early 1841, as further building work was completed. From 1867 to 1869 Sister Mary MacKillop, foundress of the Australian Sisters of Saint Joseph and later canonised as Australia's first Saint, regularly visited the gaol and along with members of her order tended both male and female prisoners. The first attempt at escaping occurred in August 1854 when two prisoners were caught in the act with each receiving 36 lashes. The first "successful" escape was in 1897 when three prisoners made it as far as Blanchetown before being recaptured. In 1942 the "New Building" was taken over by the military for use as a detention barracks. The gallows located in the building were used for a civilian execution on 26 April 1944. Following public protests over the unsanitary conditions at both Yatala Labour Prison and Adelaide Gaol, extensive renovations were carried out in 1954–55. A toilet block was constructed in 4 and 6 yards and a semi-circular wall built in "The Circle" to allow more privacy for visits. Previously, prisoners would line up toeing a brass rail in the Sally port of the main gate with visitors standing opposite and no closer than 2 metres (6.6 ft) which required the raising of voices to be heard over adjacent conversations. Former prisoners have stated that after a few minutes the noise level would be so high that no one could be heard. In 1961 a shower block was constructed and a bakery established which would supply bread to both Yatala and Adelaide Gaols. By this time the gaol was badly affected by salt damp and throughout the 1960s many prisoners were kept busy repairing it. In 1963 the Deputy Keeper's rooms in the Governor's residence were converted to administrative offices and a new residence was built in the forecourt, adjacent to the Gaol entrance.

 

In 1965 it was announced that the gaol would be demolished and all but essential maintenance work ceased. In 1969 this decision was reversed and the gaol's female inmates were transferred to a new facility at Northfield. Throughout the 1970s considerable modernisation of the old buildings occurred with one building (6 Yard remand prisoners) demolished and rebuilt. In 1971 all staff housing on the site was vacated with most of the guards former residences demolished. In 1980 it was announced that the gaol would be closed once new facilities were completed and the only major work that took place until it did close was the installation of security cameras in 1984. Later that year the remand prisoners were transferred to the new Adelaide Remand Centre. The remaining Adelaide Gaol prisoners were transferred in 1987 when Mobilong Prison opened.

 

Adelaide Gaol was decommissioned in 1988 and the site taken over by the South Australian Department for Environment and Heritage and reopened as a museum and tourist attraction with overnight accommodation in cells for tourists. In 2007, the gaol was found to not comply with the relevant safety regulations for accommodation, ending the option. The Deputy Keeper's residence, built in 1963, was later considered not in keeping with the overall architectural style of the complex and demolished in October 2009. 

Until an Act of Parliament in 1858 mandated private executions, seven hangings were held in public outside the gaol walls with the first occurring in November 1840 while the site was still under construction. Joseph Stagg was the first prisoner to be executed for his involvement with a cattle duffing gang. From 1861 to 1883, 13 prisoners were executed on portable gallows erected between the Gaol's inner and outer walls. Executions were moved to the "New Building" in 1894 where a further 21 prisoners were executed. The "Hanging Tower" was converted to that use in 1950 and used for the last four executions before capital punishment was abolished in 1976. From 1840 to 1964, 45 of the 66 people executed in South Australia were executed by hanging at the Gaol. William Ridgway was the youngest at 19 in 1874, Elizabeth Woolcock the only woman in 1873 and the last was Glen Sabre Valance in 1964.

 

Possibly one of the most haunted places in Australia. Adelaide Gaol is said to be regularly visited by some of the inmates and prison officers who once wandered its halls. It is believed that these ghost sightings are possibly innocent people who were hanged, seeking exoneration still to this very day. More ominous is the reported sightings of Adelaide Gaol's hangman.

 

Ghost sighting of Frederick Carr

Frederick 'Fred' Carr was hanged at Adelaide Gaol on 12 November 1927 for the murder of his wife, Maude. He protested his innocence, even up until the final moments before his death.

 

Maude Carr was found with her throat cut. Medical experts at the time noted the wound could not have been self-inflicted because of the angle of the cut. Interestingly, Maude's previous two husbands also died from wounds to the neck and Maude tried to commit suicide the day before she died.

 

Carr is said to have exclaimed, while in the condemned cell, 'the law requires my body, but it cannot have my soul, as I am innocent." 

 

Fred is said to appear regularly near the stairs leading to the upstairs cells of the New Building. He is reported as a happy spirit, always neatly dressed in dark clothes and taking a polite interest in visitors wandering through his former 'home'.

 

Fred's spirit was thought to appear without a face. That is, until November 2000, when his spirit apparently appeared with a face - a smiling, happy face. Why Fred's face was restored is a mystery, but he remains one of the many fascinating folklore ghost sightings of Adelaide Gaol.

 

Ghost sighting of Governor William Baker Ashton

William Baker Ashton was the first Governor of the Adelaide Gaol and despite being a reasonably fair man, he was accused of wrong-doing. The ensuing scandal is said to have hastened his demise.

 

William was a very large man and when he died (in office) in 1854, his body could not be manipulated down his apartment's steep, narrow staircase. Instead, he was unceremoniously lowered out of the front window to the undertakers waiting below.

 

Three months after his death, William was exonerated. Too little, too late to pacify a disturbed spirit. On warm, still nights with a hint of thunder in the air, his footsteps are said to be heard (through walls of solid stone) as he struggles to move furniture in an empty room.

 

Ghost sighting of Ben Ellis - the hangman

Ben Ellis was the Adelaide Gaol hangman for 10 years, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1870s. He lived at Adelaide Gaol in a small apartment below what became the female dormitory.

 

Ben took pride in his work and approached each task with complete professionalism. Each of Ben's executions was precisely - and expertly - carried out. Except in the case of the execution of Charles Streitman in 1877. In his haste to get the job done, Ben neglected to prepare his prisoner properly and Charles not only dropped but rebounded, getting caught on the platform. Instead of instantaneous death it was a further 22 minutes before he finally died.

 

Ben never questioned the right or wrong of his profession until 30 December 1873, when he was required to hang a female prisoner, Elizabeth Woolcock. She was to be the first and last woman executed in South Australia. This event changed the way Ben viewed his profession forever.

 

Ben's restless spirit is said to appear often throughout Adelaide Gaol, perhaps seeking forgiveness for a job too well done.

On top of this we found a personal experience posted online. It goes like this: 

 

            The tour starts with a walk around the entire gaol. Straight away you get a feeling that you are being watched. The immense grounds and the stillness set the scene for a night of ghostly encounters. For those that love their history they will surely learn a lot from Alison in regards to the Gaol’s dark past. From stories about ex prisoners through to information on Adelaide history – you surely get your moneys worth.

 

My Adelaide Gaol ghost story began while walking around (and this was before dark) I could hear voices as well as footsteps. I felt like someone was following the group. It was in the museum that I experienced my first paranormal encounter. While Alison and another tour participant were in the Gaol wing I could here footsteps in the museum. Instead of joining them in the wing I instead investigated where the noises were coming from. At the same time Alison and co were trying to close one of the cell door slots. After looking around the museum (I couldn’t see anything) I decided to join the others in the wing. To my amazement as soon as I reached the wing I could see a hand coming from the cell door slot. This hand forcefully smashed the slot down. You can guess what happened next. I ran for my life. I have never been that scared in my life. Well little did I know what laid ahead for the group.

 

After the tour we made our way back to the old Visiting Justice Room. Here Alison played us examples of EVP and voices from the ghost box. After my experience (I was still shaking like mad) these samples just put me further on edge.

 

Next was the investigation.

 

The investigation itself lasts around two hours. Here you are able to use equipment to track the paranormal as well as visit any location in the prison. Alison took us to places around the prison which have had vast paranormal events. Alas those places would not be the ones that would make me doubt my own sanity.

 

The induction centre looks to be just another building. But by day or night this is indeed is a dark place. As soon as I entered the building I began to feel light headed. It was like it was an extremely hot day. The temperature gauge at that stage read only 22 degrees. That was all about to change. When we sat down on the bench in the induction centre the gauge jumped to over 40 in a little over a few minutes. I then asked if any spirit could lessen the temperature on the gauge. I got a response almost straight away and the gauge dropped by 25 degrees. The group then decided to give the ghost box a go. This is where you ask questions and some times you might get a response. I’m not a great fan and neither is Alison, but I will give anything a go once. During this period the temperature gauge read 68 degrees. All the others in the room were now all complaining about feeling light headed. Alison then asks if anyone present could give us a sign they were there or touch us. Well they did surely show us they were there. It went on for a few minutes. The noise could be best described as footsteps walking through dried leaves. It was the same noise that I had heard all the night. What made this experience worse though was they kept getting closer and closer. Alison tried to radio her husband so that he could bring the video camera but the walkie talkie wouldn’t work. My nerves were shot at this stage. Thank gawd everyone wanted to leave the room.

 

After regrouping outside we checked all the equipment. Both the temperature gauge and walkie-talkies needed their batteries changed. What is weird about this is both of them had just been refreshed before the investigation. These batteries should have lasted days. Another weird thing is another group members recording device stopped when the noises got closer. There was no one near the device. On the way back we heard the jail bell ring twice (Alison stated that it never had happened before) and also the between yards buzzer went off. Very unusual indeed.

 

Let me state that all the above did happen and is real. No gimmicks or pranks. We have audio evidence that all this took place. Thank you Alison for an amazing night. For one that has been searching for such an experience for years, I owe you and the Gaols inhabitants big time. This tour is indeed worth it. Give it a go when you are next in Adelaide. You never know what ghostly things you may encounter.”

 

This account was written by a Nicholas Bishop and posted to Adelaidehauntedhorizons.com.

 

Fu Manchu once told us: King of the road says you move too slow, so it's with great haste we move along to our next stop. We are now heading to Black Mountain!

 

Black mountain national park is a 781 hectare(roughly 1400 acres) protected area in Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. The main feature of the park is the mass of granite boulders, some the size of houses. The absence of soil between the boulders and rocks create a maze of gaps and passages, which can be used to penetrate inside the mountain. These rocks can become extremely hot.

 

The area has a bad reputation as numerous people and those searching for the missing have disappeared without trace. That's why we're heading there. Is it supernatural? Bad luck? Maybe something else sinister? Let's see what we can find. First a bit of Cultural history. The National Park's "Black Mountains" are a heavily significant feature of the Kuku Nyungkal people's cultural landscape known locally to Aboriginal Australians as Kalkajaka (trans: "place of spear").

 

Queensland's Department of Environment and Natural Resources has been advised of at least four sites of particular mythological significance within the "Black Mountains" as follows:

 

There are at least four sites of religious or mythological significance on the mountain. These are the Kambi, a large rock with a cave where flying-foxes are found; Julbanu, a big grey kangaroo-shaped rock looking toward Cooktown; Birmba, a stone facing toward Helenvale where sulphur-crested cockatoos are seen; and a taboo place called Yirrmbal near the foot of the range.

 

The Black Mountain also features strongly in local, more non-Aboriginal cultural landscapes, some of which has also been described by Queensland's Department of Environment and Resource Management as follows

 

When European colonists arrived late last century, they added to the many Aboriginal legends of the area with a few of their own. Stories abound of people, horses and whole mobs of cattle disappearing into the labyrinth of rocks, never to be seen again

 

It is believed that those who vanished most probably fell into one of the chasms under the rocks or after entering one of these places became lost. It is estimated only three in ten would survive such falls, wandering below the Earth's surface with only ground water streams and insects to nourish them.

 

Disappearances are centuries old at Black Mountain with stories beginning as the white settlers began arriving and did not respect the Kuku Yalanji’s warnings. For example, in 1877 a man went out towards the Black Mountain to locate an escaped calf. When the man failed to return searches were conducted for days but no trace of the horse, cow, or man was ever discovered. Several years later Sugarfoot Jack and his criminal companions decided to take refuge near the mountain after a shootout, knowing not many people would venture there. Despite an exhaustive police search in the following days, no bodies were ever recovered.

 

Mr Harold Ludwick believes in Black Mountain's dark forces, which is why he warns people not to enter the site: a mistake his friend from Sydney made during a visit.

 

"I told him, 'Don't go in there', because I know there's a bora ground, but he was headstrong and wanted to go," Mr Ludwick recalled.

 

"After being in that place, he got home and was tormented by what he said was devils and spirits.

 

"After he got better, three or four months later, he came back and said to me, 'I know I've done something wrong on Cape York'.

 

"I said, 'Bloody oath you did, and I told you!'"

 

Some other early stories of disappearances are as follows: 

 

      November, 1882: two cattlemen Harry Owens and George Hawkins disappear while looking for stray cattle around Black Mountain, as does one of the police trackers searching for the missing men. A second tracker returns 'completely unhinged' and unable to provide a coherent report.

 

         1890: Constable Ryan tracks a fugitive to a cave at Black Mountain. He enters to see if the fugitive might be hiding inside. According to those present he never came back out.

 

         1892: prospector James Wren vanishes while fossicking at Black Mountain.

 

       Circa 1920: two young explorers determined to solve the mysterious disappearances go missing themselves, along with some of the trackers who go looking for them.

 

       1928: prospector Q. Packer goes missing while fossicking at Black Mountain. His body is later found next to his rifle with a bullet wound to his head.

 

      1932: traveller Harry Page goes missing while hiking on Black Mountain and was later found dead from unknown causes. Well into modern times Black Mountain has been ground zero for a wide variety of high strangeness. It is said that animals are spooked by the mountain, and that it exudes some evil force that has been reported to disrupt the navigational equipment of airplanes flying nearby. In fact, planes mostly avoid flying near the mountain due to these unexplained anomalies as well as the strange air turbulence that is experienced within the vicinity. A 1991 aerial survey conducted by the Bureau of Mineral Resources to test for magnetic disturbances and radiation levels on the mountain turned up nothing unusual, yet the reports of these phenomena from pilots persist. It may not be so surprising that Black Mountain is also home to a good amount of UFO activity and reports of strange lights. 

 

Black Mountain is also said to have cavernous underground chambers that are purported to hold everything from alien bases to lost civilizations, ancient tombs and priceless lost treasures. Some of the treasures said to reside within the depths of the many caves are lost stockpiles of gold, historic artifacts, and ancient texts. One of the stranger things said to lie under the mountain is a secret alien base from which UFOs emerge and which is inhabited by a race of reptilian alien humanoids that keep human slaves. Those who buy this far out idea further explain that the arrangement of the boulders is obviously artificial and that the entire mountain was built by the aliens themselves. Others speculate that the boulders were laid down by some ancient lost civilization millennia ago, and that this society thrived deep under the mountain in an enormous hollowed out domain. Some think such a civilization is still there.

 

Other bizarre tales revolve around the strange beasts said to inhabit the mountain. Although it is true that the area is home to many unique and endemic species, there are tales of creatures lurking here that are far weirder than one might imagine. Within the craggy maze of intertwined boulders are said to lurk enormous pythons that are not shy about attacking human beings. There is also an enigmatic large, cat-like predator known as the Queensland tiger that is thought to prowl the area and has been blamed for cattle mauling and mutilations that have occurred in the surrounding area. Occasional reports of large, reptilian humanoids emerging from the underground tunnels and crevices have also surfaced from the mountain. Additionally, there are numerous stories of fleeting, shadowy shapes that stalk the mountain, but it is unclear whether these represent some type of real animal, a more supernatural phenomenon, or merely a trick of shadow and light upon the black boulders.

 

One experienced bushman who penetrated into the mountain armed with a pistol and flashlight gave a harrowing account of his experience within:

 

I stepped into the opening, like other Black Mountain caves it dipped steeply downwards, narrowing as it went. Suddenly I found myself facing a solid wall of rock, but to the right there was a passageway just large enough for me to enter in a stooping position. I moved along it carefully for several yards. The floor was fairly level, the walls of very smooth granite. The passage twisted and turned this way and that, always sloping deeper into the earth. Presently I began to feel uneasy. A huge bat beat its wings against me as it passed, however I forced myself on, to push further. Soon my nostrils were filled with a sickly musty stench. Then my torch went out. I was in total darkness. From somewhere, that seemed the bowels of the earth I could hear a faint moaning which was then followed by the flapping of wings of thousands of bats. I began to panic as I groped and floundered back the way I thought I had come. My arms and legs were bleeding from bumps with unseen rocks. My outstretched hands clawed at space, I expected solid walls and floors, but could not find it. At one stage where I had wandered into a side passage, I came to the brink of what was undoubtedly a precipice-judging by the echoes. The air was foul and I felt increasing dizziness. Terrifying thoughts were racing through my mind about giant rock-pythons I have seen around this mountain. As I crawled along, getting weaker and loosing hope of ever coming out alive, I saw a tiny streak of light. It gave me super strength to worm my way towards a small cave mouth half a mile from the one I had entered. Reaching the open air I gulped in lungfuls of it and fell down exhausted. I later found that I had been underground for five hours, most of the time on my hands and knees. A King’s ransom would not induce me to enter those caves again. 

 

Damn!

 

One more tale for you:

 

  In 2001 a tale of a man that had an interesting experience arose. A man named Ivan and his friend Danny decided to camp at the bottom of Black Mountain while on a journey to a different destination. While setting up camp both noticed the complete silence of nature that surrounded them and noted it was a bit off. As the two friends drifted to sleep they were awoken when the sounds of rocks crumbling shattered the silence. Then, they started to hear footsteps that got closer and closer in every step. In a moment of adrenaline-inspired bravery, Danny rushed outside to scare whoever (or whatever) was stalking them away. Ivan, not wanting to leave his friend alone, followed behind him. When they left the tent they saw a huge black mass ambling towards them. Then, it disappeared in front of their eyes. Despite it being the middle of the night the camp as quickly as they could and left the Black Mountain. Any up for a trip to Black mountain?

 

There are many many many more places in Australia we can talk about, which is why we will be working on a creepy Australia part 2 in the future. Given the Aboriginal history and culture and the circumstances with which the country was founded, and just the age of since if these structures, it's no wonder there are tons of creepy haunted places in Australia. For now though.. As ozzy said Mama I'm comin home! Thanks for the memories!

Australian horror movies

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#76 The Cleveland Torso Murders

Episode 76

Torso Murders

 

What do an ancient riverbed, Elliot Ness, and at least 12 headless torsos have in common? They are all involved in tonight's episode! Tonight we are diving into our first real foray into true crime. We discuss one of the nation's craziest unsolved serial murder cases ever. And the best part is… It takes place in our own backyard! Tonight we discuss the Kingsbury Run Torso Slayings, better known as the Cleveland Torso Murders. 

 

The Kingsbury Run area of Cleveland Ohio is actually built on an ancient riverbed that once fed into the Cuyahoga river, long before it caught on fire of course. This area is just south of downtown Cleveland and within the area known as the Flats.  While the first body attributed to the Torso Killer was found in September 1934, there are questions as to when the killings actually started as the first mention of a headless body in The Run was in the Cleveland Leader on November 13,1905. A woman scavenging in the Case avenue dump for saleable scrap came across the headless body of a man who was shot in the chest. In early September Frank LaGossie was walking along the beach near his house cleaning up the beach and collecting driftwood when he saw something that didn't really look right sticking out of the sand. As he got closer La Gossie realised what he was seeing wear the lower half of a human torso. Severed at the waist, it was still attached to the thighs but missing it's lower legs. La Gossie ran to his friends house and called the police. It was determined that the body was that of a woman in her mid thirties, about five foot six and weighing 120 pounds. There was evidence that a chemical was used on the body and the coroner claimed the killer tried to use something like quicklime to destroy the body but used slaked lime instead which accidentally helped preserve the body. The body was not water logged so it was determined there Torso was not in the water that long. No other clues were found so police began looking through the missing persons files for women who may match the description they could come up with. 

 

     Having read the reports of the murder, Joseph Hedjuk phone Cleveland police reporting that he had found human remains along the beach in North Perry, which is about 40 miles east of Cleveland, two weeks earlier. Hedjuk said he'd reported the find to lake county deputy Melvin Keener who determined that the remains were animals and convinced Hedjuk to bury the find on the beach. On September 7 extensive digging unearthed Hedjuks find, part of a shoulder blade,a partial spinal column and 16 vertebrae. All these pieces matched the Torso found by La Gossie and showed similar exposure to lime based chemical preservatives. The next day two brothers digging in the sand near the first torso discovery found a compatible collarbone and shoulder blade. Safety five days of sensational headlines, tons of worthless leads and clues, and tons of conjecture, the nameless Torso, dubbed Lady Of The Lake, residentially disappeared from the headlines. Her remains were buried in the Potter's Field section of Highland park cemetery on September 11 and Clevelanders seemingly just moved right on from the grisly discovery. And we've still yet to hear mention of Kingsbury Run!

 

September 23, 1935 brings us the story of 16 year old James Wagner and 12 year old Peter Costumes. The two boys played that day among the waste and rubble of Kingsbury Run near E.49th and Praha Avenue. Kingsbury Run was a neglected area that was full of weeds, trash, and debris left by drifters and homeless people that dwelt in the area. Around 5 on the boys decided to have a race down a 60ft but known as jackass hill. James got to the bottom first, he asked something strange in the brush nearby. A minute later he was running back up the hill telling Peter that there was "a dead man with no head down there"! They ran to find an adult and called the police. When police arrived they found the headless emasculated corpse of a young white male. The christ was nude except for black socks. While searching the area, detectives soon found another corpse about thirty feet away. It was the headless and emasculated torso of an older man that had a strange orange reddish tinge and unlike the first corpse which was relatively fresh, this one was badly decomposed.  They searched the area for more clues and found the severed genitals of both corpses and actually found the head of the first torso found. Their first corpse was eventually identified by fingerprints and Edward Adrassy. The second body has no fingerprints and was never identified. The reddish huge suggested that the body was exposed to some sort of preservatives similar to the first body found a year earlier, but that was not something investigators put together. Andrassy was well known to police as " a drunkard, marijuana user, pornography peddler, gambler, pimp, bellicose barroom brawler, bunko artist and all around snotty punk". He ran in tough circles around many undesirables, which meant there were possibly many people with motive. This includes a man who supposedly visited Andrassys house when he was away and told his parents that he would kill Adrassy if he didn't stop paying attention to the man's wife.

 

Detectives drew the measure implications from the clues and bodys. First, the victims knew each other and the body of the unidentified victim was held until the bodies could be dumped together. Second, the bodies were drained of blood and washed before being dumped, there was no other explanation for the complete absence of blood around the bodies at the scene. Three, a park of motor oil found at the scene was most likely there to  burn the bodies. The oil had traces of blood and hair in it. Also they suggest that the careful placement of the body suggests that the body's were not dumped hastily but placed carefully and purposefully. Some suggested that the castration was some sort of criminal ritual like a mafia gesture. Beyond this this police had nothing and soon Clevelanders began to forget about this horrific crime. One last thing about this crime: detective Orly May uttered something to his partner that would end up being somewhat prophetic, he told his partner " I've got a bad feeling about this one."

 

1936 rolled around and we find Elliot Ness fresh off his celebrated fight against the Capone crime syndicate. He was the newly appointed Director of Public Safety in Cleveland. On the night of January 25th into the morning of the 26th, several dogs were raising the alarm around the Hart Manufacturing Company. At one point a resident decided to do something about one of the barking dogs. As she entered an alert where the dog was she found the dogs straining at it's leash trying to get to a bushel basket that was laying against the back wall of the building. The resident looked into the woman walked back out and found a local butcher named Charles page and told him there were some hams in a basket in the alley. Page went to investigate believing this may be evidence that a butcher shop may have been robbed in the area. What he found was something completely different. He found body parts in the basket. More specifically an arm, two thighs, and the lower half of a female Torso. The body parts bite evidence of coal dust and coal lump imprints. They also found a burlap sack nearby with a pair of cotton underwear wrapped in newspaper in it. Also another sack was found nearby containing chicken feathers. The body was identified after an expert named George Koestle looked through more than 10,000 possible matching fingerprints to finally find a match to a  Florence Polilo. She had been married at least twice and was divorced from her second husband Andrew Polilo in the late twenties. As with our last victims Ms. Polilo was no stranger to police. According to police she figured in a number of barroom brawler and vice activities. She was arrested for soliciting in 1930 and occupying tons for immoral purpose in 1931. She was also arrested for prostitution in Washington D.C. in 1934 and again in Cleveland in 1935 for illegally selling intoxicating beverages. She'd been reportedly going downhill fast in the time leading up to her death. The police find that she had many aquaintances but no one really knew her. They looked for a man she lived with when she moved back from D.C. who reportedly beat her. They also had reports she was in a barroom brawl with a black man in the night of her death. They sought men locked to her with amazing names such as Captain Swing and One Armed Willie, but nothing came off these queries. The police determined the body was place where it was found at around 2:30am which is when all the dogs were heard barking. Police surmised that a very sharp knife in the hands of an amateur was used. A couple weeks later, on February 7th the rest of Ms. Polilos relative were found… Minus the head. Detectives were quick to mention there was no connection between this and the Andrassys killings.

 

We're going to kind of run through the rest of the victims here somewhat quickly for the sake of time.

 

June 1936: Early one morning in Kingsbury Run, two young boys discovered the head of a white male wrapped in a pair of trousers close to the East 55th Street bridge.

 

Police found the body of the twenty-some-year-old man the next day dumped in front of the Nickel Plate Railroad police building. Clean and drained of blood, the corpse was intact except for the head. Pierce again determined the death had been caused by decapitation. In spite of a fresh set of fingerprints and the presence of six distinctive tattoos on various parts of the body, police were never able to identify the victim. There was no evidence of drugs or alcohol in his system. And the contents of his stomach showed his last meal was baked beans and judging by the state of suggestion he was killed a day or two before the body was found. Day after three Torso was found the head was out on display the county morgue in hopes that someone could identify him. A plaster reproduction of the man’s head, along with a diagram of the kind and location of the tattoos, were made to display at the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936. More than one hundred thousand people saw the “Death Mask” and tattoo chart. The “Tattooed Man” was never identified. The original Death Mask, along with three others from the case are on display at the Cleveland Police Museum. This would be the murder that would spark the legend of the Cleveland Torso Murders and the hubby for The Mad Butcher Of Kingsbury Run. Police and experts still differed on opinions on the case including whether the first body was part of this whole messed and some even doubted whether Polilo was part of it. As Parents began telling their children to stay away from the Run, city editors started giving serious thought to a Cleveland Jack the Ripper!

 

July 1936: A teenage girl came across the decapitated remains of a forty-year-old white male while walking through the woods near Clinton Road and Big Creek on the near west side. The victim had been dead about two months and his head, as well as a pile of bloody clothing, was found nearby. Judging by the enormous quantity of blood that had seeped into the ground, this man had apparently been killed where his body was found. He had no distinguishing marks. Although authorities didn't know it yet, this would be the only torso vision to turn up on the west side of Cleveland. Judging by the clothes going and other clues, police determined the victim to be a resident at a hobo camp in the Big Creek woods not far from the crime scene. Oddly enough Elliot Ness, still basking in the headlines he made for fighting police corruption and organized cringe remained silent on the subject.

 

September 1936: A transient trips over the upper half of a man's torso while trying to hop a train at East 37th Street in Kingsbury Run. Police searched a nearby pool, which was nothing more than a big open sewer, and found the lower half of the torso and parts of both legs. Police sent a diver in to make the recovery. The number of onlookers that turned out to watch the grim spectacle was estimated at over six hundred, and the killer may well have been among them. Victim number six was in his late twenties and the cause of death, yet again, was decapitation. Coroner Pierce noted that the lack of hesitation marks in the disarticulation of the body indicated a strong, confident killer, very familiar with the human anatomy. The head had been cut off with one bold, clean stroke. The victim died instantly. Identification was never made. Six brutal killings in one year and the police had neither clues nor suspects. The Cleveland Press, The Cleveland News and The Cleveland Plain Dealer all reported almost daily on the killings and the lack of a suspect. Tension was high. Who was the "Mad Butcher" of Kingsbury Run?

 

Giving in to mounting pressure from Mayor Harold Burton, recently appointed Safety Director Eliot Ness gets more involved in the case. Coroner Pierce calls for what the newspapers dub a “Torso Clinic”: a meeting of police, the Coroner and other experts to discuss information and to “profile” someone who could be responsible for these gruesome killings.

 

The police department put detectives Peter Merylo and Martin Zelewski on the case full time. They move deftly through the seedy underworld that constitutes the Run and the Roaring Third, often dressing the part, often on their own time. By the time the case had run its course, the two had interviewed more than fifteen hundred people, the department as a whole more than five thousand. This would be the biggest police investigation in Cleveland history.

 

The November elections return Harold Burton as Mayor, but Coroner Pierce is replaced by the young democrat, and now legendary, Sam Gerber. Gerber’s fierce dedication to medicine, along with his degree in law, put him at the forefront of the investigation.

 

February 1937: A man finds the upper half of a woman's torso washed up on shore east of Brahtenahl. Unlike all previous victims, the cause of death had not been decapitation; this had happened after she was already dead. The lower half of the torso washed ashore three months later at about East 30th Street. The woman was in her mid-twenties. She was never identified.

 

June 1937: A teenage boy discovered a human skull under the Lorain-Carnegie bridge. Next to it was a burlap bag containing the skeletal remains of what turned out to be a petite black women about forty years old. Dental work allowed for the unofficial identification of one Rose Wallace of Scovill Avenue. Police followed every lead they had on her – they led nowhere.

 

July 1937: There were labor problems in the Flats that summer and the National Guard had been called in to maintain order. A young guardsman standing watch by the West 3rd Street bridge saw the first piece of victim #9 in the wake of a passing tugboat. Over the next few days, police recovered the entire body, except for the head, from the waters of the Cuyahoga River. The abdomen had been gutted and the heart ripped out, clearly indicating a new element of viciousness in the killer’s approach. The victim was in his mid to late thirties; he was never identified.

 

April 1938: A young laborer on his way to work in the Flats saw, what he at first thought was a dead fish, along the banks of the Cuyahoga River. Closer inspection revealed it to be the lower half of a women’s leg, the first piece of victim #10. A month later police pulled two burlap bags out of the river containing both parts of the torso and most of the rest of both legs. For the first time Coroner Gerber detected drugs in the system. Were the drugs used to immobilize the victim or was she an addict? The answer might come when they found the arms; they never did. She was never identified.

 

August 16, 1938: Three scrap collectors foraging in a dump site at East 9th and Lakeside found the torso of a woman wrapped in a man’s double breasted blue blazer and then wrapped again in an old quilt. The legs and arms were discovered in a recently constructed makeshift box, wrapped in brown butcher paper and held together with rubber bands. The head had been similarly wrapped. Gerber noted that some of the parts looked as if they had been refrigerated.  While searching for more pieces, the police discover the remains of a second body only yards away. These two bodies had been placed in a location that was in plain view from Eliot Ness’s office window, almost as if taunting him.  Both victims #11 and #12 were never identified.

 

August 18, 1938: At 12:40 A.M., Eliot Ness and a group of thirty-five police officers and detectives, raid the hobo jungles of the Run. Eleven squad cars, two police vans and three fire trucks descend on the largest cluster of makeshift shacks where the Cuyahoga River twists behind Public Square. Ness’s raiders worked their way south through the Run eventually gathering up sixty-three men. At dawn, police and fireman searched the deserted shanties for clues. Then, on orders from Safety Director Ness, the shacks were set on fire and burned to the ground.

 

The press severely criticized Ness for his actions. The public was afraid and frustrated. Critics said the raid would do nothing to solve the murders. They were right, but for whatever reason, they did stop.

 

July 1939: County Sheriff Martin O’Donnell arrested fifty-two-year-old Bohemian brick layer Frank Dolezal for the murder of Flo Polillo. Dolezal had lived with her for a while, and subsequent investigation revealed he had been acquainted with Edward Andrassy and Rose Wallace.

 

His “confession” turned out to be a bewildering blend of incoherent ramblings and neat, precise details, almost as if he had been coached. Before he could go to trial, Dolezal was found dead in his cell. The five foot eight Dolezal had hanged himself from a hook only five feet seven inches off the floor. Gerber’s autopsy revealed six broken ribs, all of which had been obtained while in the Sheriff’s custody. To this day no one thinks Frank Dolezal was the torso killer. The question is: why did Sheriff O’Donnell.

 

Other suspects:

Most investigators consider the last canonical murder to have been in 1938. One suspected individual was Dr. Francis E. Sweeney. Born May 5, 1894, Sweeney was a veteran of World War I who was part of a medical unit that conducted amputations in the field. Sweeney was later personally interviewed by Eliot Ness, who oversaw the official investigation into the killings in his capacity as Cleveland's Safety Director. During this interrogation, Sweeney is said to have "failed to pass" two very early polygraph machine tests. Both tests were administered by polygraph expert Leonarde Keeler, who told Ness he had his man. Ness apparently felt there was little chance of obtaining a successful prosecution of the doctor, especially as he was the first cousin of one of Ness's political opponents, Congressman Martin L. Sweeney, who had hounded Ness publicly about his failure to catch the killer. After Sweeney committed himself, there were no more leads or connections that police could assign to him as a possible suspect. From his hospital confinement, Sweeney sent threatening postcards and harassed Ness and his family into the 1950s. Sweeney died in a veterans' hospital in Dayton on July 9, 1964.

 

In 1997, another theory postulated that there may have been no single Butcher of Kingsbury Run because the murders could have been committed by different people. This was based on the assumption that the autopsy results were inconclusive. First, Cuyahoga County Coroner Arthur J. Pearce may have been inconsistent in his analysis as to whether the cuts on the bodies were expert or slapdash. Second, his successor, Samuel Gerber, who began to enjoy press attention from his involvement in such cases as the Sam Sheppard murder trial, garnered a reputation for sensational theories. Therefore, the only thing known for certain was that all the murder victims were dismembered.

 

Black dahlia connection:

 

The gruesome 1947 murder of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, THE BLACK DAHLIA, which inspired countless books and films, remains unsolved. Yet, Short’s killer, many believe, may have been the Cleveland Torso Killer. On January 15, 1947, her nude body was discovered cut in half and severely mutilated in a vacant lot near Leimert Park in Los Angeles.

 

The killer not only cleaved the body in twain and mutilated the corpse, but Short had also been drained entirely of blood and the remains scrubbed clean. Short’s face had also been slashed from the corners of her mouth to her ears, creating a chilling effect known as the “Glasgow Smile”- resembling The Joker.

 

“It was pretty gruesome,” Detective Brian Carr of the Los Angeles Police Department said. “I just can’t imagine someone doing that to another human being.”

Dubbed “The Black Dahlia” by the press, the case made headlines for weeks as every aspect of Short’s brief life was examined by LAPD detectives and the media.

 

The closest thing they had to a clue was that Short had been working as a waitress before meeting her untimely end.  A round-up of the café’s habitues yielded nothing.

 

Dahlia_Map

 

The exhaustive homicide investigation went nowhere. As per usual in a high profile murder case, there were several confessions by kooks and a plethora of sketchy witnesses looking to get their names bold-faced in the tabloids.

 

Black Dahlia Evidence

 

The Elizabeth Short murder remains one of the most bizarre cold cases in history, fueling a true crime cottage industry of novels and films that purport to solve the crime.

 

Yet, The Black Dahlia may have been a victim of an infamous serial killer who terrorized America’s heartland: The Cleveland Torso Murderer.

 

As the bodies piled up, The Torso Murderer always chopped the heads from his victims’ bodies, often cleaving the torsos in half. Several of the male victims were castrated and others were cleaned with a chemical solvent. The victims’ remains were inevitably found months or years after they had been mercilessly butchered. Identification by police was often impossible as the victims’ heads were rarely found. Often it was truly “a hank of hair, a piece of bone…”

 

Initially, LAPD investigators probing the Elizabeth Short murder conducted a reexamination of the Cleveland Torso Murderer case files. While the similarities were uncanny, the link to the Dahlia case proved inconclusive at first.

 

In 1980, a former Cleveland Torso murder suspect, Jack Anderson Wilson, was under investigation by renowned LAPD homicide detective “Jigsaw” John P. St. John.

 

St. John claimed he was close to proving Wilson had not only been the Cleveland Torso Murderer but had also butchered, Elizabeth Short – the Black Dahlia. Before St. John could arrest him, the suspect died in a fire in 1982.

 

A local Cleveland man who studied the case for years named James Nadal is certain that the aforementioned doctor Frances Sweeney is indeed the killer. He lays out evidence in an interview with Cleveland magazine in 2014. He puts forth on his 2001 book that there was a vagrant named   Emil Fronek who claimed a Cleveland doctor tried to drug him in 1934 — right around the time the murders may have begun. Badal also believes he's identified the butcher's laboratory, the place where he disarticulated his victims.

 

You can find the Cleveland magazine interview online if you're interested. It's good reading and definitely interesting. The story of the vagrant being poisoned we are going to include here because it's pretty interesting and it's definitely an intriguing part of the tale: 

 

     In November 1934, Fronek supposedly was walking up Broadway Avenue, looking for food. He said he found himself on the second floor of a doctor's office. The doctor said, "I'll give you a meal."

 

While Emil was shoveling the food down, he began to feel woozy and wondered if he'd been drugged. So he ran down the steps, onto Broadway and into Kingsbury Run, got into a boxcar, fell asleep and awoke three days later. He said he went back to Broadway and East 55th, but couldn't find the doctor.

 

He decided Cleveland was pretty dangerous, so he went to Chicago and got a job as a longshoreman. In August 1938, his story got back to Cleveland. Detective Peter Merylo was sent to Chicago to bring him back.

 

Two policemen drove Fronek up Broadway slowly. When he got to the area around East 50th and East 55th, he says, "It's here someplace." They walked up and down the street several times, but he couldn't find anything that looked like a doctor's office.

 

Ness interviewed him. Officially, they decide — this is what the papers report — that they didn't think it had anything to do with the butcher. They were convinced the butcher's laboratory was close to downtown.

 

Another interesting theory involves a series of killings actors the pond. They were also dubbed The Torso Murders. They happened forty years earlier, in London.  While Jack the Ripper was terrorizing Whitechapel, a second serial killer was dismembering bodies and dumping the body parts.  Most of them ended up in the Thames, but a few were found in secluded parks… Near Whitechapel.  At one point during the Ripper investigation, the two murderers were even compared and it was decided that The Torso Murderer of London and Jack the Ripper were not the same serial killer.  It is unlikely that the killer from 1888 in London dismembering bodies was the same killer doing it in Cleveland in 1936.  Even if the London murderer was 18 at the time, he would have been 58 when the first body turned up in Cleveland.  However, there has been speculation that the two sets of murders could have been committed by a father/son.  It is possibly the earliest mention of a father passing along his desire to kill to a son.  At the time of the Torso Murders in Cleveland, this was dismissed as farfetched, but recent research has revealed that some of the details of the crimes are almost exact matches for each other.  In 1937 however, it was proposed by a coroner who was aware of the Torso Murders in London and Ness made the coroner swear to never repeat the theory or he’d fire him for being incompetent.

Do there were have it, the most chilling, crazy, headless serial killer you've probably never heard of.. Unless you're from Cleveland is a big time serial murder enthusiast. Was it related to the black dahlia? Was it a deranged doctor? Was it actually a group of people it a bunch of copycat killers disposing of bodies so as to throw off authorities? We may never know. Cleveland's very own Jack the Ripper. 

 

There are many books as one might expect written about this subject. Much of the information for this episode was gathered from two places. First a book entitled "Maniac in The Bushes and more Tales Of Cleveland Woe" written by John Stark Bellamy II. It contains numerous stories of true crime and disasters from Cleveland throughout the years. He had a series of these books which are great reading even if you're not from Cleveland which detail other major crimes like the Sam Shepherd murder trial and disasters like the Collinwood highschool fire and the May Day riots. The second source was the Cleveland police museum website. 

 

As far as the top ten movies for tonight… There are several documentaries based on these murders. A movie called Kingsbury Run was released in 2018. The movie is about a killer who is basing his crime spree off of the Torso Murders. It's currently got a 5.9 star rating on IMDB .

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