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October 2022 Library Lecture Series Stories

12/1/2022

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     Everyone has a creepy story to tell. Yes, even you. It may be your own story, or a story that has been handed down in your family, or one that a friend or colleague told you. But the fact remains--everyone has a creepy story.
     The following mysterious tales were told by audience members at my 2022 library lecture series. They are transcribed exactly as they were told apart from some minor grammatical corrections. I'm sure you will enjoy this collection of true, creepy, otherworldly short tales told by regular, everyday people like yourselves.
     So turn off your lights, sit back, and prepare to be scared. 


Kent Library, Kent, New York

     I was recently at a friend’s house, an old farmhouse on the Westchester-Putnam County border. The house was over one hundred years old, and the day I was there it was being renovated. I was sitting in the kitchen, and as I was there the workers were taking down the drop-ceiling in order to uncover the original ceiling. I was thinking to myself, ‘Wow, I’m going to see the real, genuine ceiling.’ 
     When they took the ceiling tiles down I saw that, at some point, someone had placed a cross with rosary beads wrapped around it in the ceiling. So I’m thinking to myself, ‘This is suspicious!’ 
I asked my friend, “Does anybody live upstairs?” 
     “Yes,” she said, “There are tenants on the floor above, but they’re not home right now.”
     “Would you mind if I wait here until they get back?” I asked, and the woman said that I could stay as long as I liked. 
      I waited for them to come home, and then I approached them. I said, “Excuse me. This is going to sound like a really silly question, but have you experienced anything out of the ordinary in your apartment since you’ve been living there?”
     The guy looked at me and he went pale. He said, “We’ve never told anybody, but we’re afraid of our laundry room. The laundry room has some kind of a presence, and we get really anxious every time we have to do our laundry.” 
     Well, it turns out that their laundry room is right above the cross and rosary beads. So whoever must have been living downstairs must have been hearing things going ‘bump in the night’, and they decided to put them in the drop-ceiling for protection. 

Putnam Valley Library, Putnam Valley, New York
     My husband and I had some friends over one night. He and his guy friends were on the porch, and I was inside with my friends. All of a sudden we hear them hootin’ and hollerin’ outside! One of the men had an ‘Indiglo’ watch, and all of a sudden it started glowing really bright all by itself, and they all sat there watching it glow and glow and glow. 
     I have a flat yard that dips way down to a big hill with a stream down below. As the watch was glowing like this, they happened to look down the hill and there was a woman walking across the yard. She came up the hill, then walked across the back yard. They said that she kind of floated. They named her ‘Polyester Patty’ because it looked like she had polyester clothing on, like from the 1960s. A striped shirt and nylon pants. 
     These are three non-believers that we left on the porch, but to this day they believe they saw a ghost that night. We’re upset that we missed it! But the whole thing started with the glow of the watch. 
Note: I pointed out that spirits often influence the behavior of electronic equipment. So, the glowing of the Indiglo watch seems to have been a prelude to the activity that followed. 

__________


     Back in the 70’s my husband and I moved from the city to Putnam Valley, and I saw a deer for the first time. I know it sounds dumb that I was excited about seeing a deer because you see them all the time, but I had never seen one before. So, I took a picture of the deer. But when I got the picture back, after I developed it, instead of a deer there was a man in the picture. It was the ghost of a man with a beard. 

__________


     My grandfather built his house in New Jersey, and he lived there with his wife for the rest of his life. He also had a workshop behind the garage. Now, his wife was kind of controlling. They would fight and she wouldn’t want him in the house. So, when they’d have these fights he would go out to the workshop. But even though they were fighting, she would religiously flick the kitchen lights on and off to let him know that dinner was ready and that it was time to come back inside.
     My grandfather died first, then about a year later his wife got very sick. She had throat cancer, and they had to remove her teeth and put a port in and everything. So she really needed a lot of help, but she was very stubborn. My mom tried to help her, but she didn’t want anyone in the house and she didn’t want anyone to help her. 
     She died in the house. She actually bled out when she was there alone one. When they found her, they followed the trail of blood. It was clear that she started to bleed out in the kitchen, then she went to bed and died on the mattress. 
     So we cleaned out the house and we sold it. We have distant cousins that live behind that house, and my mom still talks to them every now and then. The new owners talk to the cousins, and they said that it’s making them crazy because the kitchen lights turn on and off all the time, and they cannot figure out why. They even called in an electrician but they still can’t figure out why the kitchen lights turn on and off all the time.
     Of course, we think it’s my grandfather’s wife turning the lights on and off in the kitchen the way she used to when she wanted my grandfather to come in for dinner. 
__________


     I was on the Gettysburg battlefield on a ghost tour. I really enjoyed the tour because in addition to the ghosts, there’s real history in the stories. At one point in the tour, they were telling a ghost story. This was one of my least favorite stories that they were telling us that moment, one that I found the least believable of the many that they were telling. So, we’re listening to a story about a little boy that people would see shivering in the cold, and then he would disappear leaving no footprints in the snow. The story goes that he was trapped in the snow and died many years ago.
     It was kind of a cold evening as we were listening to this. I was there with my girlfriend at the time, and I put my hands in my jacket pocket to stay warm and I felt my girlfriend put one of her hands in my pocket to stay warm. And I looked over at her lovingly, and her hands were at her sides! So, who was I holding hands with? I really felt the hand go into my pocket. Or, so I thought. 

Adriance Library, Poughkeepsie, New York
     In Staatsburg, New York is the Mills Mansion. It’s an historic home that you can take tours of. The house was built in 1832, and it was turned into a museum in 1938. I know a man who works at this house, and things happen to him all the time there. Just today something strange happened. Somebody went into one of the rooms where they store the grandfather clock, and he was in there by himself. You know when somebody goes by you there’s a little bit of wind? He turned around thinking that somebody came in the room with him, but nothing was there. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he got very scared. 
     Another time this same gentleman was in another room. They were preparing for Christmas, and Mrs. Mill’s portrait was there. He looked at the portrait and said, “Well, I hope you like people coming through your house.” In this room is a gold clock that had never worked since 1938 when the state acquired the house as a museum. As soon as he said this, the clock dinged. 
__________
     There’s a house near Canandaigua, New York. It’s in Rushville which is the next little town over, up near the Finger Lakes. The house belongs to my friend's family, and nobody will stay there. The house is haunted, and you can see them, and hear them giggling. They’re young. People have heard footsteps in the middle of the night stomping at the door. But like I said, nobody stays there anymore at all because they’re too afraid.
     I’ve been in the house, and I’ve actually seen them peeking around the corner. They were young children, and they were all just giggling. They didn’t look solid, just a shape and they were moving. It looked like they’re peeking around the corner. I don’t know why I could see them, but they were there. It was very unnerving. But it got to the point over the years that nobody will go there. The old man who used to live in the house just passed away, so it’s an empty house now. 

__________


     As a child, my parents moved the family back to Wisconsin. My dad started a veterinary practice, and it was in an old house next door to where they were building a new animal clinic. The whole time we were living there, I went into my brother’s room just once and I never wanted to go there again. I just felt funny about the closet. I was just a kid at the time, and I never thought about it again, but I never wanted to go into my brother David’s room. I always made up excuses and said things like, “I don’t want to go in your room, it’s too cold in there.” 
     Years later when I had gone to college, I was out one night and I met the family who moved into this house after we left it. They said, “Oh, we’ve been wanting to talk to you. Did you know that the house you lived in before us was haunted?” I said “Wow! I didn’t know it was haunted. I just know that when we lived there I never wanted to go into my brother’s room.” 
     These people actually saw the ghost. It was the ghost of a little boy who had died in a fire house that had previously stood on that location. They saw this little boy. They researched it, so they knew who it was. One of the people said that as a child, growing up in the house, they saw this little boy. It wasn’t a ghost to be afraid of, it was just a trapped spirit.
     The funny thing I remember about my brother’s room was the closet. I remember the one time that I was in the room it felt like there was a green glowing light coming from underneath the door. I just remember that as a kid. But the whole thing is just strange because I grew up in the house and I don’t remember being frightened about anything else. I just never went into my brother’s room the whole time we lived there except for that one time. I would say, “No, it’s too cold in your room. We’re going to play in my room!”
__________

Roxbury Library, Roxbury, Connecticut
     So I live in Marbledale, which is a little town in Washington, Connecticut in Litchfield County. We built a house next to my husband’s mother, next to the house where he grew up. When my dad was a young boy, the lady next door was murdered. It was a horrible murder. We kind of knew the story, but when we built the house we kind of forgot about it. 
     One night I was reading in bed, and I saw this woman. I saw her scurry across the bedroom floor. She was beautiful, young, and she had this beautiful red hair. So I’m like, that was really weird, but I actually saw that! 
     So I told my husband and he said, “Oh, you saw the lady who was murdered next door. She had red hair. I had no idea about her features or anything. She was really kind of mutilated, it was a terrible murder. I saw her beautiful face, but she was kind of mutilated. Her body was broken, and as if she was trying to get away from the person, scurrying across the floor. She was just a beautiful young 20-something-year-old woman. So I saw this, and I said to my husband that she was beautiful and red-headed. He said, “Yes, that was our neighbor.” 
     Barry: So, you saw the scene itself playing out. 
     Woman: I did. When my dad was a little boy, he was at the murder site when it was happening. He was outside. He could hear her screaming. And then the house was set afire, and her body was burned. 
     Daughter: So, I’m corroborating the story. She would walk up and down the hall of the house that my dad built, and she would sit in the doorway and watch us sleep. 
     Woman: And they would see that separately, my three daughters. 
     Barry (to daughter): And she wasn’t mutilated when you saw her?
     Daughter: No, not when I saw her. But she had red, red, very fine hair. Like shoulder length. 
     Woman: Same features they saw, but they saw her younger and watching over my three little daughters, and I saw her like when she was being murdered. 
     Barry (to woman): Now when you saw her, was it late at night?
     Woman: It was like 8 o'clock at night, and I had just put the girls to bed then went up to my bedroom to read. I was just settling in. My husband was not there because he was usually late coming home from work. I was in bed, propped up ready to watch TV or read. I was not asleep. It was clear as day.
     Barry: Did she come through the door when you saw her?
     Woman: She just appeared at the side of my bed by my nightstand. She was scurrying right next to my side of the bed, from the head of the bed towards the foot of the bed. And it was clear as day. 
     Barry: And it was like she was crawling on the floor. That’s a really terrifying thing to see!
     Woman: And to this day I can see every bit of it. 
     Barry: Do you remember what she was wearing?
     Woman: It was like casual clothes, it was like from the 70s. To this day it makes me emotional when I think of it. 
__________


     I used to work in the entertainment industry. We were at a producer’s house. We were just talking, and I looked over to the left and I saw a woman. She had black hair and she had a white outfit on. And I went to him and said “Oh, your daughter’s home!” and he said, “I don’t have a daughter, what did you see?” I said, “I saw a woman and she had black hair. I figured it wasn’t your wife. And she was wearing a white outfit and she was walking up the stairs. And he goes, “Yeah, we have a spirit in the house.
     This house was owned by Charlie Chaplin’s mother. He bought it for his mother. But the upstairs area was a private room, and that’s where he brought his mistress. And his mistress kept walking up the stairs, and I saw the mistress walking up the stairs. She looked real solid. 
     Barry: What was she wearing?
     Man: She was wearing a white gown, and she had black hair. And she was just walking right up the stairs. I saw the back of her as she was walking up the stairs. 
     Barry: How far up did you see her travel up the stairs?
     Man: The problem was, there was a wall that started part-way up the stairs. 
__________


     Where we live, we have a pool which I’ve been taking care of for years. It used to belong to my wife’s grandfather. I was sleeping one night when I felt something hit my leg like someone was trying to wake me up. I thought it was my wife. I ignored her, and it started hitting my leg harder. I woke up, and at the foot of my bed I saw three three shadows. Two were standing still, the one in the middle looked like it was yelling at me, and I saw that they were pointing. I looked out the window toward where they were pointing and my pool pump had exploded. It was like three, four o'clock in the morning, and the whole yard was flooded. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s what it’s trying to tell me!’ We think it was my wife’s grandfather, because it was his pool.
     Barry: Tell me about the shapes. What did they look like
     Man: Basically, one looked like a black mass. 
     Barry: Were they human shaped?
     Man: They weren’t really human shaped at all. The one in the middle you could kind of see a face, but not really. So all you could see. You could see facial features. That’s how I knew it was yelling because I could see the movement in the face. And that’s when it happened. 
     Now, to piggy-back on that story. About a week later I got bad poison ivy on my leg because I do work outside. I tend to sleep with the A/C on, and I just have my leg out because when you have poison ivy and you sweat it irritates it. I woke up because my foot was really really cold and I saw a light, almost like electricity coming down and bending over my leg. And as it was doing this my leg was getting colder and colder. 
     Do you know how it feels when you get the fight-or-flight feeling when something scary happens? Well, I didn’t feel that. I didn’t feel threatened at all. It was weird because it was a weird shape, but it was just this white light. Then, it just looked like it turned and disappeared. 
     My wife told me that her grandmother used to cover her when the blankets were off her. My whole leg was exposed. 
     Barry: So, you think it might have been related to your wife’s grandmother, and how she used to cover her with the blanket?
     Man: I think so. 
     Barry: Was the light coming from above and shining down on your leg?
     Man: I didn’t see a shape, I just saw a white light. It was walking towards my leg, then it looked like it went over my leg. 
_________


     We’ve lived here in Roxbury. For the last two or three years I can clearly see something that looks like an illuminated window about two hundred yards away from the house in the woods. I told my son, because he’s tall enough to see through the same window as well. And he’s like, “Yeah, I can see it. It’s like there’s a window in the middle of nowhere.” 
     So the next day we started to walk through the woods. We wanted to see if someone had put some electricity or something there. But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. But we continued seeing this. My son and I looked out the window, and there it was. We both saw it at the same time. 
     Barry: And you’ve never figured out what it is?
     Man: No. It’s not always there. It’s on and off.
     Barry: How many times have you seen it?
     Man: At least thirty or forty times. 
     Barry: How deep in the woods from your house is it?
     Man: I’d say 150 to 200 yards. 
     Barry: If there was a house there, and you were seeing the windows of that house, does it look like it’s a bottom floor window or a top floor window?
     Man: Bottom. 
     Barry: So, it’s lower to the ground. 
     Man: There’s a cemetery at the same sort of altitude another 300, 400 yards away. 
     Barry: Is it a square window?
     Man: No, rectangular. 
     Barry: A rectangular window, and it’s illuminated from within …
     Man: I can’t tell. But it’s more like the light is on it because it’s not coming towards you. 
__________


     I was taking a class about twenty years ago in Monroe. My class was at 6:30 PM, and it was around this time of year, around October. It was around dusk. There was a church that I would turn at when I was driving home. So, I turned at the church and there was a cemetery there. So I looked over, and I saw a nun in the cemetery. She was wearing a white habit. So I’m driving thinking, ‘I didn’t know there was a convent around there.’ So I take another look and I see her. She’s still there, and she’s very solid looking. 
     Barry: How far away was she?
     Woman: I was in the car, and she was only about thirty feet away. So I got to my class and I said to one of the other ladies, “I didn’t know there was a convent here.” And she said, “Why?” So I told her that I saw a nun in the cemetery. She asked what she looked like, and I told her she had a white habit. The woman told me that people in Monroe have seen this same nun. So, I’m not the only one who has seen her. 

__________


     My parents built our house here in ‘64. My father was a non-believer in anything spiritual. He had Alzheimer's, and when he was in the nursing home completely incapacitated I would see him walking to the side of the house purposefully as if he wanted to come inside. And that’s where the vision ended. 
     Barry: And you were awake when this happened?
     Woman: Oh yes, it was daytime. Since he’s died, he’s back in the house. He won’t leave. We’ve asked him to leave, we’ve asked him to go. He mostly lives in what had been my mother’s sewing room in the basement. I can smell him. He had a smell about him. It kind of comes and goes. A little less now. Somebody said to my sister, “Tell him that you love him, and that he was a really great guy and a great father”. So she said that out loud and he just flew into her face. She could feel him. Anger. Like, “I’m not leaving. This is my house!” 
     So, after he died I was in his bedroom with a friend. We were cleaning out his clothes and looking through his stuff. Then we went outside, and I saw him. He always has the same outfit on. The one he always wore. T-shirt, chinos, a belt, and work boots. I saw him walk through the room, through the furniture, and into the closet. 
     Barry: Does he look solid?
     Woman: Yes. 
     Barry: And yet he walks through the furniture?
     Woman: Yes. That was the only time I saw him do that. I’ve also seen him walk down the hall and go towards the basement stairs because that’s where he goes. And there’s a smell in the back bedroom that had been their master bedroom. And it’s very medicinal, and it’s very strong, and I find it very disturbing.
     Sometimes it gets stronger, then it fades before eventually going away. I tell him, “Dad, it’s time for you to go. Mom is waiting for you.” But he is not going. He is not leaving. 

__________
Armonk Library, Armonk, New York 
     Before I moved here I lived in a suburb of Akron, Ohio. So this particular day I was home alone doing laundry. The bedrooms were upstairs and the washer and dryer were in the basement. So after gathering all of my laundry into a basket upstairs I walked down the staircase. To get to the basement you have to turn right at the bottom of the stairs and go through the dining room. So I had just finished going down the stairs and I had the laundry basket in my hands. I turned to my right and went into the dining room. 
     The room had a table and four chairs, and in the chair at the far end of the table that was facing the window, there was a man sitting in it. He had on a dark blue Dickies work uniform. He was an older man with gray hair, and he was just sitting in the chair looking out the window exactly where I would sit and read when the laundry was going, or when I was knitting or whatever. 
     When I thought that someone had broken into the house because the patio door was open and unlocked. So when I saw this guy sitting there, I gasped out loud and dropped the laundry basket, and he was gone!
     That was the first time I actually saw something. But I would also hear footsteps upstairs. And things would be moved. Like, my slippers would be moved. I would hear pacing upstairs while I was sitting downstairs. I knew it wasn’t my cat, and I knew it wasn’t my dog, and I was the only one home alone. 
__________

     About four years ago we were invited to a friend of mine’s 50th birthday party. It was in Woodbury so we needed a place to stay. We ended up staying at the Curtis House Inn in Woodbury, the oldest Inn in Connecticut. We didn’t know that it was haunted. We had no idea that it was a registered haunted Inn. 
     Some of us got there early. We were downstairs at the bar hanging out and we were drinking before we went over to the birthday party. There was actually the Inn and there was the carriage house. The woman said that there weren’t enough rooms open in the Inn to house us all, but there were rooms available in the Carriage House. There were about three rooms in the Carriage House which was set back a little from the Inn itself. So I said that I’d stay in the Carriage House with my friend Kelly. 
     When we were downstairs in the bar we had a couple of drinks. Kelly said she was on her way, so we all said that we should get ready for the party. So I went back to the Carriage House, and I’m getting ready waiting for Kelly to come. And there’s a knock on my door and I go to open it. I figured it was Kelly because she called to say she was coming, but when I opened the door no one was there. I looked around, but I was the only one in the Carriage House. 
     Kelly finally came and I didn’t pay any attention to the knock that I had heard on the door. When she came into the room she started making fun of the place. “This place is so old and dingy,” she said. “What picked this place out? This is awful.” 
     So we go to the party, then at the end of the night we come back to our room. We go to bed. It’s two single beds together. We’re the only ones in the Carriage House. You can tell, it’s kind of just like spooky. So we go to bed, then all of a sudden Kelly makes this growl. This voice came out of my friend Kelly that you would never even imagine. It was like this crazy voice. It felt like something was in the room. It felt to me, her bed was like by the wall, and it felt like something came out of the wall and it was in our room. I was like I gotta get the light on, there’s something in the room. I was like, “Kelly, what happened?” She’s like, “I don’t know! Did you hear my voice? I don’t know what that was.” And she was the one making fun of the place the whole night. 
     Barry: Was she saying anything in this strange sounding voice?
     Woman: It was just like a growl (demonstrates). It didn’t go on for very long. Just for a few seconds. But it felt like something came into the room. So after a while I was like, “OK, let’s just go back to bed.” That whole night we just couldn’t sleep. I could smell smoke, like someone was smoking in the room. Then I smelled this really foul smell. 
     The next morning when we woke up, Kelly said, “Oh my god. Somebody was in the bed with me. It felt like it was a woman. A young woman. She had long black hair, and she was tugging on my sheets. She would get really really close to me. So close that I could feel her presence right up against me. She stayed with me the whole night in my bed. I was so scared I couldn’t even move or anything. It was just the scariest night.
     So we decided to look up the Curtis House Inn online and we learned that it was haunted. I’m like, “We’re never staying here again!” We met our friends who stayed in the main Inn, and she said that all night long someone kept jiggling the doorknob of her room. Even though she could clearly hear if someone was walking in the hallway, she never heard footsteps when the doorknob was jiggling. She never heard anyone walking past in the hallway. 

__________

     I want to show you this picture I have on my phone, but I have to tell you the story about it. We grew up in a house in Harrison, New York. When we were kids, we always thought it was haunted because a lot of strange things happened in that house. We would see people standing in the back door. One time we saw a farmer with a pitchfork standing back there. We had a little playhouse, and in the middle of the night it would sound like the pieces were moving around inside. In the backyard we had a swing set, and at night we would hear the swing creaking back and forth. We would look outside and the swings weren’t moving, but then we’d go back to bed and we’d hear the swings swinging again. 
     So, my mother took this picture of us three kids when we were little. Years later my sister was looking at the photo and she noticed that in the shadow of my brother’s head there’s a face. (Shows me the picture) You can see that it’s a soldier. He has on a general’s uniform with a hat. These are the buttons on his coat. 
     Barry: Wow! I can see him really clearly. He has a mustache. 
     Woman: Yes! But it wasn’t until years later that my sister discovered the face. This is just a picture of the photograph that I took with my phone, but in the original photo the man is really clear. 

__________

     My mom passed away suddenly in 2019. It was totally unexpected. She hadn’t been feeling well, but she wasn’t sick or anything like that. My daughter and I drove to Michigan to handle everything. 
     I stayed at my brother’s girlfriend's house, and some nights I would fall asleep on the couch. So I’d be sleeping on the couch and I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I’d smell cookies and brownies baking. Now, I knew no one was baking cookies or brownies in the middle of the night! But my mom always used to bake cookies and brownies. 
     Also when I was there I would hear sounds. Now, my mom always carried plastic bags in her purse for some reason. In the middle of the night I would hear the sound of bags rustling and they would wake me up. This happened so often that I was like, ‘This is driving me crazy!’ 
     The night before we were to head back to New York, I fell asleep on the couch again. I woke up in the middle of the night, and it was freezing. The TV was still on, but the picture had froze. It was frozen on one of those Alex Trebek life insurance commercials. 
     I had been watching The Golden Girls, and I was really annoyed. I needed to go back to sleep, I wanted to finish watching my show. I had to drive back to New York in the morning. So I said out loud, “I don’t know who’s here, and I don’t know what you’re doing, but could you just put my show back on so I can go back to sleep? I have to leave at 6 AM.” And as soon as I finished saying this, the TV just started working. I just said, “Thanks!”
     A couple of weeks later my brother was living in the house because my mother died so unexpectedly. We had a two thousand square-foot house, eight acres, and we had to clean it out. So as we were going through my mothers things, I was joking about her cooking. Now, there were these pewter plates that had been very sturdily anchored onto the wall for over forty years. These things were really solid in place. They were not moving. So as I was poking fun at my mother’s cooking, one of the pewter plates went flying across the room. I didn’t know what was happening because it happened behind me and I heard the clang as it hit the floor. I was like, “Alright, message received. Sorry mom, I’ll stop making fun of your cooking!” 
     Even now I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll smell things. When I wake up in the middle of the night and I smell popcorn I know it’s my dad; and when I smell chocolate chip cookies or brownies cooking I know it’s my mom. 
     I have some of my mom’s things in my house. Some jewelry and other little things that had belonged to her. Well, just a couple of weeks ago I woke up one morning and near my coffee pot there was a rosary. I was like, “Where did this come from?” It was my mothers, but I didn’t even know that I had it. It must have been in a box with her stuff, but I have no idea how it got there. 

__________

     This story happened to my grandmother when she was a little girl. Now this was years ago, because my grandmother has been dead for years, and I’m an old woman myself. I’m 77-years-old. But when I was growing up my grandmother always used to tell this story. 
     When she was a little girl, she and her family lived in a home in New Holland, Pennsylvania. But the family moved out of the house because they experienced so many strange things. Everyone would be asleep, and all of a sudden they’d hear crashing sounds coming from the kitchen like someone was throwing all the dishes to the floor. They would call one another to say, “Are you down there? What’s happening?” When they went down to see what was going on, everything was in its place. Nothing was disturbed. 
     Another experience they had was when they would go up the stairs they would feel crowded, like they had to go through a bunch of people. There was nobody on the stairs, but they would feel this. So things got so bad that they got scared and finally moved. 
__________

     I was once in  a religious shop in New Milford. I was just looking around and the lady who ran the place was sitting behind the desk. I was looking at books and stuff, and I saw a book of St. Katherine of Siena. I was looking very much at this book, and I said, “My mother was named from Saint Katherine of Siena.”
     As I was leaving she said, “Excuse me, but I just must tell you this. When you were talking about your mother being named for Saint Katherine of Siena, your mother was here. She was here, and she wants you to know she loves you very much.”

     Now I saw nothing. I heard nothing. But I believe this woman. She wasn’t a wack-job. I just believe it. I had just lost my husband and I was hurting so bad. So when this woman said to me, even though what she said wasn't about my husband, I believe her. She said that my mother was there, and I believe she was there to comfort me during this terrible time in my life. 

__________

     I have a friend, and she had a cat that passed away. In her kitchen is a stainless steel dishwasher, and she keeps finding cat prints on it. She scrubs it down, really scrubs it down. Then like a day later, the cat prints come back, but they’re  always in different places. The paw prints keep coming back no matter what she does. She doesn’t know what to do, so she just keeps wiping it down

_________

     A long time ago I had to go to a conference in Washington, and I was staying in this really old, old hotel. It was really nice, and it cost a lot of money to stay there. But again, it was really old. 
The conference finished about 4:30 and I went upstairs to take a nap. After that I planned on going to bed. It was summer, and still daylight, so I had the windows wide open. The light from outside was bright, so I didn’t put any lights on in the room. 
     I laid down on the bed to take my nap, and I fell asleep. Now, nothing was on in the room. No lights. No television. Nothing. Suddenly I woke up, because the television was turned on full-blast. That’s what woke me up. It was like screaming. 

     Like I said, when I went to sleep the windows were open. But now the blinds were closed, and every single light was on including the bathroom. 
     The first thing I did was shut the TV off because it was so loud. I’m looking around the room and I’m like, “Wait a minute, why would I turn all these lights on.” Then I thought, “You didn’t turn the lights on, because the window was open when you went to sleep.” I looked and the window was closed. So I’m like, what the hell?! 
     So now I’m really scared to death. I went into the bathroom and washed my face, but I left the lights on. I thought, ‘OK. You want the light on, the lights are on. They’re staying on!’ 
I went downstairs, and I must have been shaking like a leaf. I was white as a ghost. And the concierge came over and said, “Are you OK?” I said, “The weirdest thing just happened …” and I told him. He goes, “Are you on the fifth floor?” I said, “Yes!” He goes, “They won’t hurt you. But there’s a lot of activity on the fifth floor.” I’m thinking, ‘What does that mean?! I gotta stay in this room?’ 
     So I ended up staying with him in the lobby until one in the morning, and he’s like, “No one is going to hurt you.” So I went back to the room, I kept all the lights on, I turned the TV on. I never went to sleep, and I left first thing in the morning. 
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Nightmares

11/22/2022

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     We all have bad dreams from time to time, but nightmares are a type of dream that are in a category all their own. They’re terrifying dreams that trigger a strong emotional response from the mind, typically fear but also despair, anxiety or extreme sadness. Nightmares may also contain situations of psychological or physical terror and panic. People generally sleep through a bad dream, but when they have a nightmare they awaken in a state of terror or extreme distress, and the dream stays with them long after they wake.
     The word nightmare is derived from the Old English word mare. But in this case, we’re not talking about a horse. In Germanic and Slavic folklore, a mare is a hideous creature that sits on people’s chests while they sleep causing them to have horrific dreams. In Germany, people were so afraid of the mare that they used to recite a charm before going to sleep in order to keep this terrifying creature from invading their dreams.
          Here I am lying down to sleep;
          No mare of night shall plague me
          until they have swam through all the waters
          that flow upon the earth,
          and counted all the stars
          that appear in the sky.
     In Polish folklore, the mare is known as the mara. Rather than being a paranormal entity, it is the soul of a living person that leaves their body at night, and it appears in the guise of a moth, or as gossamer-thin wisps of hair or spiderwebs. In Czech folklore, the mara is known as the night-butterfly, a large moth-like creature that lands on unsuspecting sleepers causing them to have nightmares. 
     Russian legends paint the mara as an invisible spirit who sometimes has the ability to show herself in the form of a woman with long flowing hair. In other traditions, the mara is a succubus-like creature who seduces men in their dreams, then has sex with them. But as pleasurable as the experience may be for the dreamer, this demonic sexual encounter ultimately leads to their death. In Serbian folklore, the mara is a spirit who slips quietly through a keyhole at night, then strangles you while you sleep. 
     The mare is synonymous with another folk tradition known as the night hag or old hag – a creature associated with sleep paralysis. During sleep paralysis, a person wakes in the middle of the night totally immobilized. They can see and hear perfectly, but they’re unable to move even the slightest bit. Accompanying the paralysis is a feeling that a malevolent being is sitting on their chests or lurking at the foot of their bed. 
     Traditional tales about mares, night hags, and the terrifying experience of nightmares and sleep paralysis can be found in almost every culture. In Scandinavian folklore, the mare is a cursed woman whose body is mysteriously transported while she’s asleep. In this trance-like state she visits people in her village at night and sits on their rib cages causing them to have nightmares. 
     In Fiji, sleep paralysis is referred to as kana tevoro, which roughly translates as being eaten by a demon. Although it’s called a demon, it’s actually the ghost of a recently dead relative who has returned because of some unfinished business, or to communicate important news to the living. The person who finds themselves in this paralyzed state can chase away the spirit simply by telling it to go away, or by cursing at it. 
     In Turkish folklore, sleep paralysis and nightmares are attributed to a visitation by a supernatural being known as a jinn. The jinn are said to be created by God from fire before the creation of mankind. This invisible creature comes to the victim's room at night, immobilizes them by holding them down, then starts to strangle them. It’s said that to get rid of the jinn, one needs to pray to Allah by reading special passages from the Qur'an. In some versions of the story, the jinn wears a wide hat during these visitations. If the person is courageous enough to take its hat, the djinn will become his slave.
     Interestingly, these hat-wearing jinns are very similar to people’s descriptions of shadow people. A shadow person is a solid black figure that often appears at night, and is accompanied by a feeling of dread. Many shadow people are described as wearing hats, so the dark specter is sometimes referred to as the hat man. 
     Descriptions of shadowy, human-like figures who show up at night have appeared in folklore across cultures. One example comes from the Native American Choctaw tribe’s mythology which tells of a being known as the Nalusa Chito. This shadowy creature is so feared that many will not even utter its name for fear that doing so will summon the spirit. And there’s a good reason to be afraid of this dark nocturnal visitor. The Nalusa Chito not only appears in the night as a solid black figure, looming over the beds of its victims – it also eats their souls if they allow evil thoughts or depression to enter their minds. 

     While most of us try to forget our bad dreams, many authors have used their nightmares as material for their writings. Stephen King used a childhood nightmare as the inspiration for his first book, Salem’s Lot. He said, “It was a dream where I came up a hill and there was a gallows on top of this hill with birds all flying around it. There was a hanged man there. He had died, not by having his neck broken, but by strangulation. I could tell because his face was all puffy and purple. And as I came close to him he opened his eyes, reached his hands out and grabbed me.”
     Another example of a nightmare used as the inspiration for a literary work comes from Mary Shelly who attributed her inspiration for the novel Frankenstein to a particularly gruesome nightmare. In the book’s preface she wrote, “I saw the pale student of the unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out. And then, on the working of some powerful engine, it showed signs of life and stirred with an uneasy, half-vital motion…”
     In the fall of 1885, Robert Louis Stevenson was a very sick man. The author of Treasure Island had suffered from poor health ever since he was a child, but this most recent battle with a severe bronchial ailment left him barely able to leave his home. One night, he had a terrifying dream. He cried out in his sleep and tossed and turned so much that his wife woke him up. But instead of being grateful to be rescued from this terrible nightmare, he scolded her saying, “Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.” Immediately upon waking, he already had three scenes sketched out for a new book. That book would eventually become the classic horror novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

Psychologists have always been fascinated by dreams and nightmares. Famed psychoanalysis Carl Jung theorized that dreams are a glimpse into the unconscious mind, and that nightmares are symbolic manifestations of something he called the shadow. Jung said that everyone has two types of shadows. The personal shadow is made of repressed experiences from childhood which we deem unacceptable due to conditioning by adults. These experiences include fantasies, desires, sadness, and sexual curiosity. The collective shadow contains all of the terrors and struggles that humans have faced since their primal beginnings, as well as our primitive instincts associated with survival, such as sexual desire. 
     According to Jung, nightmares are a reflection of things we unconsciously struggle to accept about ourselves – aspects of our shadow self. By facing our nightmares head on, we can begin to embrace these repressed feelings and desires so they’ll have less of a detrimental effect on our emotional lives. 

Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could actually control our dreams? To change our nightmares into ones that aren’t scary at all? Well, believe it or not, some people can do just that. It’s called lucid dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming, and they gain control over the dream’s characters, narrative, or environment.
     The idea of lucid dreaming has been around for ages. In 350 BC, Aristotle wrote his treatise 'On Dreams'. In it, he said that “one can sometimes be aware while dreaming that one is dreaming.” The ancient Egyptians believed that everyone had the ability to lucid dream. They thought that a person’s soul left their body at night, and that dreams were symbolic of the soul’s travels. And since the creator of the dream is our own soul, we can shape our dreams any way we want at will. The Egyptians even built special temples where people would sleep in order to help attain this lucid dreaming state.  

     Dreams of the death of loved ones, natural disasters, or violence and murder are common nightmare themes. But apart from the terror and strong emotions that such dreams leave in their wake, there is another thing we fear when we have a nightmare – that it might come true. Unfortunately, some nightmares actually do. 
     Precognitive dreams are those that predict a negative event such as a natural or man-made disaster, or the death of a loved one. They may be a type of warning signal left over from the time of our primitive ancestors. Back then, dreaming of wild animal attacks, sudden severe weather, or war with a neighboring tribe served as a way to prepare for these events. Some believe the ability to see into the future through our dreams lies dormant in modern man, only surfacing when a particularly horrific or personal tragedy is about to occur. 
     Many people have reported having dreams or nightmares that actually came true. One example comes from a man considered by many to be the greatest American writer of all time, Mark Twain. 
     Twain’s given name was Samuel Clemens, and before he became a writer he was a riverboat pilot in Mississippi. In 1858, Sam and his younger brother Henry were working together on a boat named the Pennsylvania. 
     One night, Sam had a terrible dream in which he saw his brother Henry laying dead in a coffin. It wasn’t a typical wooden casket, but one made of metal. Henry was wearing a suit that belonged to Sam, and on his chest was a huge bouquet of white roses with a single red rose at the center.
     Sam woke up in horror, convinced that his brother’s body actually was laid out in the next room. He tried to convince himself that the dream was not real, and he ended up walking around outside for hours to try to erase this horrific nightmare from his mind. 
     The dream haunted Sam for days, and he related the details of it to various family members. They brushed it off as being just a bad dream and told him to forget about it. Sam agreed to try to put the dream out of his mind, but the memory of it continued to hang over him. 
     The pilot of the Pennsylvania, William Brown, had a violent temper, and during a voyage downriver Sam got into a full-blown fight with him. This led to Sam being transferred to another boat while Henry remained on the Pennsylvania. 
     The following day, the Pennsylvania’s boiler exploded and the ship caught fire. Henry was badly burned in the disaster. He survived, but died at a hospital in Memphis a few days later. Although his body was badly burned, his handsome face was untouched. The female volunteers who were helping tend to the victims of the tragedy were so struck by his beauty that they gave him the best coffin available.
     When Sam entered the room where his brother was laid out, he was stricken with horror as the exact details of his dream played out before his eyes. His dead brother was laying a metal casket, wearing the same borrowed suit he had seen in his dream. The only thing missing from the scene was the floral bouquet. But as Sam sat in the room, mourning the loss of his brother, a woman came in with a bouquet of white roses. She laid it on Henry’s chest. The white bouquet had a single red rose in the center. 
     For the rest of his life, Mark Twain would tell the story of how he dreamed of his brother’s death. The experience affected him so much that he was one of the first to join the Society for Psychical Research in the hope that he might better understand how precognitive dreams worked. But he could never escape the thought that he might have been able to prevent his brother's death had he warned him after having that terrible nightmare.

     By far, the most frightening type of nightmare is one that, thankfully, few ever experience. These are the nightmares that are caused by demons and other dark entities.
     There are four stages to demonic possession – Infestation, oppression, obsession, and finally possession. During the oppression stage, those who are being attacked by a demon almost always experience horrific, perverse, and violent nightmares. 
     As a paranormal investigator, I've had first-hand encounters with people who were in various stages of possession. One case in particular stands out in my mind because of the terrible nightmares that accompanied the demonic infestation.
     The case involved two sisters. Out of respect for their privacy, I’ll refer to them as Melanie and Beth. Both were intelligent, professional women in their 50’s. One was a psychologist, the other a nurse. They lived together in a large apartment in Upstate New York, and never experienced anything unusual until one night Melanie had a terrifying dream of a black hooded figure standing over her bed. When she woke up, the figure was actually in the room with her standing right next to her bed. After about 20 seconds, this mysterious dark figure faded away. 
     The next morning, Beth came down to breakfast. Before Melanie had a chance to tell of her strange dream, Beth started talking about the nightmare she had had that night. The dream she told was the exact same dream Melanie had, right down to the black figure appearing in the room. 
     Night after night the sisters had horrifying nightmares, and the dreams became more violent and perverse. Some involved dead bodies that were horribly mutilated or riddled with bullets lying on the floor of their rooms, or sitting in chairs. Others centered around visitations by grotesque creatures that seemed to be made up of a conglomerate of different animals. One had the trunk of an elephant and a mouth full of sharp protruding teeth. Each time the sisters would have a dream, the creatures in the dream would appear in the room with them upon awakening. And every morning the sisters would compare notes only to find that they always had the exact same dreams.

     I’ve never met a nightmare I didn’t love. Whether it’s an insane knife-wielding nun chasing me through a cornfield, or the bloated rotting corpse of Mickey Rooney emerging from my closet holding a dozen helium balloons, the truth is, I love them all. Of course, like everyone else in the world, I’m initially afraid when I wake up from these little nocturnal insanities. But the truth is, they're mine. My creation. The children of my psyche. The way I look at nightmares is that they’re calling to me, begging me to understand them, or at least to try. Because it’s only after we come to terms with the fiends that haunt us at night that we’ll someday find ourselves holding hands with them, laughing about some long forgotten joke, and saying to one another, “You know, you’re not so bad after all.”

Resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare
https://archives.cjr.org/language_corner/the_history_of_nightmare.php
https://hyperallergic.com/80970/when-nightmares-in-art-were-all-the-horrorifying-rage/
Books inspired by nightmares
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/health-fitness/celebrities-reveal-their-dreams-and-nightmares-1088120
https://www.bustle.com/articles/28415-jason-segels-interesting-nightmare-7-more-celebs-with-freaky-bad-dreams
https://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-true-nightmares/amandasedlakhevener
https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/brain/nightmares-brain
https://www.ranker.com/list/reddit-stories-dreams-that-came-true-premonitions/amandasedlakhevener
https://www.bustle.com/life/what-are-shadow-people-these-supernatural-entities-are-scarier-than-any-horror-movie-12219528
http://alexandrabittner.com/mara-the-nightmare-legend/
https://www.luciddreamsnews.com/intermediate/lucid-dreaming-in-ancient-egypt
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The Connecticut Witch Trials

10/1/2022

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     If you were to research the history of Hartford, Connecticut, you would read about the Dutch settlers of the 1600s, and about the famous Charter Oak. You would read about the Hartford Convention, a series of meetings in 1814 where delegates from five New England states met to discuss New England's possible secession from the United States. As you continued making your way through the city’s history, you would discover that Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe made their homes there in the late 1800s, and that the city eventually became a major manufacturing center for everything from firearms and seed planting machines, to bicycles and typewriters. You would read all of this, and much more, but there would be one piece of history you probably would never discover, a part of Hartford’s dark past that many would rather pretend never happened.
     Everyone knows about the Salem witch trials of 1692, but the first person executed for witchcraft in the United States wasn’t from Salem. She was a young woman from Windsor, Connecticut, and her name was Alse Young. In 1647, she was accused of witchcraft and put on trial. It is not known what Alse did to cause her neighbors to make such wicked accusations. But what we do know is that she was found guilty of witchcraft, and that she was executed by hanging in Hartford, Connecticut on May 26, 1647 and buried in an unmarked grave. 
     The Connecticut witch trials, also known as the Hartford witch trials, occurred from 1647 until 1663. They were the first large-scale trials of their kind in the American colonies. During that time period at least 34 people were accused of witchcraft in Connecticut, of which eleven were put to death -- just nine fewer than the number of people executed for witchcraft in Salem. 
     The Connecticut witch panic and trials are almost unknown to most people, but they are an extremely important and dark part of American history. Whereas the Salem witch panic lasted just seven months, Connecticut’s spanned several decades. And the witch trials in Connecticut were proportionally far more deadly than Salem’s. In Salem, they executed 20 of the 180 women and men brought up on formal witchcraft charges, while in Connecticut 11 out of 34 were executed. In other words, eleven percent of those accused of witchcraft were put to death in Salem, and 32 percent of those accused in Connecticut were executed. So, you had a much better chance of being put to death for witchcraft in Connecticut than in Salem.
     But why were people so afraid of witches in colonial times, and why did they even believe in them in the first place? I mean, let’s face it, the thought of women riding around on broomsticks, putting hexes on people, and having animals at their beck and call who did their dirty work seems like nothing more than a bunch of dark fairy tales. But keep in mind, the first settlers in America came from England, and in Europe approximately 40,000 people were put to death for witchcraft over a 200 year period.
     Belief in witchcraft was common in England. In fact, ‘white witches’ and ‘white wizards’ known as cunning folk or blessing witches were well respected in many English communities. In an age where medicine was largely unknown or unavailable, practitioners of white witchcraft were often successful in healing the sick by using folk-remedies and herbs. White witches were also called upon to help identify enemies in the community through various methods of divination.
     While white witches were credited with curing sick children and animals, ‘black’ witches were thought to inflict sickness and death. One function of a white witch was to protect the community from the evil doings of black witches. They did this through the use of dolls stuck with pins. The dolls were called poppets and the pins weren’t meant to actually harm the black witch. They were used to neutralize her spells and to protect the community from further harm.
     The Puritans were fiercely religious, conservative, and intensely intolerant of other beliefs or religions. They also suffered many hardships in the New World including epidemics, starvation, death of livestock, hard winters, and Indian attacks. Witchcraft was often the scapegoat for these hardships because belief in witchcraft was as common as the belief in God. If you believed in God, then you had to believe in the devil; and people firmly believed that witchcraft was just one way that Satan wielded his power.
     Today, a lot of evidence must be shown before someone is put on trial for a crime. But in colonial times, a single accusation of witchcraft was enough to get the ball rolling. Very little was known about medicine in the seventeenth-century, so witchcraft was often blamed for people getting sick or dying. Women were midwives, so if a mother or child died in childbirth, the midwife was often to blame, and sometimes she was accused of being a witch. 
     In colonial times, livestock was the most important possession a person could have. If livestock behaved oddly or died, it was thought that there had to be a reason. Sometimes it was blamed on witchcraft. During one Connecticut trial, it was said that a woman came into the yard of her neighbor. When asked what she wanted, the woman said that she just wanted to see their new calf. At the time, the calf was reported to have been secured to a heavy post that was driven into the ground, but after the woman left it somehow pulled the post from the ground and ruined a crop of corn. Because of this, the woman was accused of being a witch. Of course, any logical person would suppose that it wasn't her fault; most likely, the post just wasn’t secured deep enough in the ground. But this was the mindset of suspicious Puritan communities. 
     It’s one thing to be accused of being a witch when crops fail or animals go loose, but God help those with mental illness in colonial Connecticut. One of the accused had a habit of talking to herself. She was a feisty old woman, and probably not very nice. One of her neighbors testified that she once heard the old woman muttering to herself. When she asked her who she was talking to, the old woman snapped back, “I was talking to you”. Now, obviously this was a snarky reply meant to imply, “Mind your own business”, but it was taken as a sign that the ‘witch’ was attempting to put a curse on the woman. Today, when we read the details of her neighbors’ testimonies, it’s obvious that the old woman was mentally unstable or suffering from dementia. But back then, such behavior branded her as a witch. 
     Alse Young was the first person in Connecticut to be put to death for witchcraft. The second person to be convicted, and the first to confess, was Mary Johnson of Wethersfield. 
     Mary was working as a house servant in Hartford, Connecticut in 1646, where she was accused of theft. She moved to Wethersfield, where she also worked as a house servant, but in 1647 she was once again accused of stealing and she was whipped for her crime by the local minister. During her punishment, Johnson confessed that “a devil was wont to do her many services”. She also confessed to “uncleanness with men and Devils” and that she had murdered a child. She was convicted on December 7, 1648 for “familiarity with the Devil” and imprisoned in Hartford, Connecticut. While in prison awaiting her execution, it was discovered that she was pregnant. Her execution was delayed, and after the birth of her son she was hanged in June of 1650. 
     Why did Mary Johnson confess if she wasn’t actually a witch? Religion was so ingrained in people’s lives that any moral weakness was viewed as a sin. Women often confessed that they were tempted by Satan to do things that were considered morally wrong. Men, on the other hand, rarely aired their inner conflicts and guilty feelings.
     In colonial times, women were sexually repressed. Today, a woman who has a healthy sexual appetite is considered perfectly normal, but Mary probably considered her sexual thoughts to be sinful and therefore worthy of punishment. When she confessed to “uncleanliness with men”, she was in all likelihood confessing to having sex outside of marriage. In colonial times, pre-marital sex was deemed a mortal sin, and adultery was often blamed on the devil’s influence. 
     As for Mary’s confession of murdering a child, it is likely that she felt responsible for the death of a child who was in her care, and that she considered it murder. Or, it’s possible that she had had a miscarriage and that she blamed herself for the child’s death. 
     Less than three years after Mary Johnson was put to death, the first husband-and-wife couple were accused of witchcraft, Wethersfield residents John Carrington and his wife Joan. Details of the accusations against the couple are scarce, but the indictment read: “Thou art indicted by the name of John Carrington of Wethersfield, carpenter, that not having the fear of God before thine eyes thou hast entertained familiarity with Satan, the great enemy of God and Mankind; and by his help has done works above the course of nature, according to the laws of God and the established laws of this commonwealth thou deservest to die.” The same indictment was handed down to his wife. 
     The only clues we can glean from the indictment is that the couple were accused of “not having the fear of God” and of doing “works above the course of nature”. This could have been as simple as not attending church services on a regular basis, and being blamed for their neighbor’s crops failing. Whatever the reason, the couple was found guilty of witchcraft on March 6, 1651, and they were hanged together in Hartford.
     In 1664, Lydia Gilbert of Windsor, Connecticut was charged with witchcraft. The accusations against her were outlandish to say the least. In 1651, Lydia and her husband Thomas took in a boarder named Henry Stiles. Henry was Thomas’ employer, and Lydia also once kept house for him.
On November 3, 1651, Henry and a neighbor named Thomas Allyn were participating in training exercises with a group of militiamen. During the exercises, Allyn’s gun went off accidentally. The bullet hit Henry and killed him. A trial was held, and Allyn was found guilty of “homicide by misadventure”. He was fined 20 pounds and ordered not to bear arms for one year.
     Although this seemed to be the end of the story, it wasn’t. After the trial, the people of the community continued to try to understand how such an accident could have occurred. Soon, rumors began to spread and Lydia Gilbert was accused of playing a part in Henry’s death. On March 25, 1654, a full three years after Henry’s accidental death, Lydia was accused by her neighbors of practicing witchcraft, and that she had used her evil powers to cause the musket of Thomas Allyn to discharge.
     A trial was held, and a panel of jurors were assembled. Six of those on the panel were residents of Windsor who were well aware that Thomas Allyn had been convicted of accidentally killing Stiles, but Lydia was still found guilty. Though there are no written records that tell Lydia’s ultimate fate, most historians believe that she was hanged at Hartford. This is due to the fact that records show that shortly after her trial, her husband, Thomas Gilbert, moved to Glastonbury, Connecticut and quickly remarried. 
     We often hear of the witchcraft panic that swept across seventeenth-century New England, but what exactly is a panic? A panic is defined as a “number of linked cases forming a chain reaction”. By 1662, witchcraft accusations in Hartford had spread at an alarming rate and that year alone the witch hunting hysteria culminated in seven trials and four executions.
     It all started on March 23, 1662 when 8-year-old Elizabeth Kelly died. She had been in good health until after spending a day with a neighbor, Goodwife Ayers also known as “Goody” Ayers. The next day, Ayers came to the house and shared a bowl of broth with the girl. That night the girl became sick, most likely with bronchial pneumonia, and her high fever made her delusional. She reportedly exclaimed, “Help me! Goodwife Ayres is upon me. She chokes me. She kneels on my belly. She will break my bowels. She pinches me. She will make me black and blue.” The little girl’s parents, John and Bethia Kelly, suspected that the devil was at work, and they became convinced that their daughter had been struck down by witchcraft at the hands of Goody Ayers.
     The Kelly’s brought their concerns about Ayers to the town officials and she was summoned to the side of the dead girl who was laid out in her parents’ home. The corpse was examined, and it was found that there were bruises on her shoulders and upper arms. These bruises seemed to correspond to the child’s ravings when she said that Goody Ayers “willed me me black and blue”. According to reports, during the examination of the body, a red spot appeared on the dead child’s cheek nearest to where Ayers was standing. Of course, this was taken as a sign of Ayers being a witch.
     The local magistrates summoned physician Bray Rossiter to examine the body. Because of the distance he had to travel, it took several days for the autopsy to take place. Onhand was an assistant and six witnesses. The doctor concluded that Elizabeth had not died of natural causes. He stated that the body was pliable without any of the stiffness that should have been present. He reported that the girl’s throat contained a large amount of blood, and it was stiff and hard. In his medical report, he concluded that Elizabeth Kelly had suffered “unnatural harm”. Hartford residents interpreted this to mean that Goody Ayers was a witch.
     For whatever reason, Goody was not immediately imprisoned, so she and her husband William wasted no time in skipping town to avoid a certain death sentence. They abandoned their eight-year-old son and left behind all of their possessions. The couple most likely fled to New York or Rhode Island since neither state had an extradition treaty with Connecticut.
     Around this same time a Hartford resident named Ann Cole began to behave strangely. Although she had always been a pious woman, she began convulsing and spewing curses and blasphemy. According to one account Ann “had taken with strange fits wherein she--or rather the devil, as ‘tis judged made use of her lips--held a discourse for a considerable time.” But Ann wasn’t accused of being a witch; she claimed that she was under the spell of her neighbor, Rebecca Greensmith.
     Now, the Greensmiths were not well liked by the townspeople. Rebecca was described by her minister, Reverend John Whiting, as being “lewd, ignorant and considerably aged”. Nathaniel Greensmith wasn’t well liked either. He had had several run-ins with the law. He was accused of stealing a hoe, of stealing one-and-a-half bushels of wheat, of lying in court, and of battery.
     Based solely on Ann Cole’s accusations, Rebecca Greensmith was charged with witchcraft and thrown into prison. Ann also gave the names of other people in town who she said were bewitching her. Soon, the accused women began to accuse other women of the town of being the real witches.
In January, 1663, Rebecca Greensmith confessed in court to having “familiarity with the devil”. Based on her testimony and behavior in court, the woman was clearly mentally unstable. Among other things, she said that at Christmas she and the devil had “a merry meeting” to form a covenant. Greensmith said that she met in the woods with seven other witches who would often come in the form of cats, crows, or other animals. These included Goody Ayers, Mary Sanford, and Elizabeth Seager. She also said that the devil came out of the woods in the form of a deer that skipped around her.
     Rebecca also confessed that her husband Nathaniel was involved in witchcraft, and that strange animals or familiars would follow him about in the woods. She claimed that Nathaniel possessed impossible strength; that he could easily place large logs on his wagon, a job that would normally require help from several men. At the trial, neighbors testified that they saw Elizabeth Seager, one of the women Rebecca accused of also being a witch, dancing with other women in the woods at night, and that they were cooking something mysterious in a large black kettle.
     Although Rebecca Greensmith confessed to being a witch in court, her husband continued to protest his innocence. But it was no use. Because Rebecca had openly confessed to being a witch, everything she said at the trial was considered to be true. On January 25, 1663, Rebecca and Nathaniel Greensmith were both executed by hanging. Joining them at the Hartford gallows that day was Mary Barnes of Farmington who had also been found guilty of witchcraft. A few days later, Mary Sanford was sent to the gallows. After the executions, Ann Cole was reportedly “restored to health” which only fueled the belief in the community that witchcraft had been the root cause of her malady.
     Elizabeth Seager--the woman Rebecca Greensmith accused of being a witch--was also put on trial that same year. She was indicted for witchcraft, blasphemy, and adultery. She pleaded not-guilty to all of the accusations. During the inquiry a neighbor testified:
     “I saw this woman, Elizabeth Seager, in the woods with three more women, and with them I saw two black creatures like two Indians but taller. I saw likewise a kettle there over a fire. I saw the women dance around these black creatures. I looked up at the women and smiled at them. One of the women saw me and said, “Look who is yonder!” and then they ran away up the hill. I stood still and the black things came towards me and then I turned to come away.” The witness admitted that he never actually saw the women’s faces, but testified that “I knew the persons by their habits or clothes, having observed such clothes on them not long before.”
     Elizabeth was convicted of witchcraft and adultery in 1665 and she was sent to prison to await execution. Luckily, she was eventually set free “on the grounds that the jury’s decision to convict was legally indefensible. The jurymen were furious, and those who believed that Elizabeth Seager was a witch, of whom there were many, made it clear that they felt betrayed.” (*) After her release, the couple and their three children moved to Rhode Island.
The four executions in 1663 of suspected witches in Hartford were to be Connecticut’s last. Although another witch panic broke out in Fairfield in 1692, only two of the six accused went to trial, and neither were put to death. 
     Connecticut held its final witch trial in 1697, fifty years after Alse Young’s execution. The trial occurred in Wallingford where Winifred Benham and her teenaged daughter were accused of witchcraft to cause physical harm to three children of prominent Wallingford families. They were also accused of killing another child by causing her to have ‘spots’ on her body. We now know that the child most likely died of measles. The jury returned a verdict of “not proven” and the case was dismissed.
     People continued to accuse their neighbors and relatives of being witches, but these accusations usually ended up with the accused suing for slander, and winning. In 1750 witchcraft was finally taken off of the list of capital offenses in Connecticut.
     The executions for witchcraft don’t seem real, do they? Reading about the trials and executions may be disturbing, but because it happened so long ago it almost feels like we’re reading a work of fiction. These poor, innocent men and women don’t seem like real people when we read about them -- but they were. It was reported that as one woman was led to the gallows, she broke free and wrapped her arms around a large boulder, pleading for her life. As she was forcibly dragged away, the skin on her fingers were ripped off leaving bloody trails on the stone. The poor woman continued to cry and plead for her life right up until she dropped through the gallows floor to her death. Just imagine how devastating it must have been to the spouses and children of those executed for witchcraft. I’m sure that husbands fought tooth and nail for their accused wives, trying to talk some sense to the court, but ultimately failing and being forced to watch them hanged for no reason.
     In October 2012, descendants of those executed for witchcraft petitioned the Connecticut government to posthumously pardon the victims, but the motion was not passed. 
     On February 6, 2017, the town of Windsor unanimously passed a resolution to symbolically clear the names of the town's two victims, Alse Young and Lydia Gilbert. Memorial services were held for the victims of the witch trials in Windsor in June of 2017. The service marked the 370th anniversary of Alse Young's execution.
     Please remember in your prayers the eleven Connecticut residents who were unjustly executed as witches so long ago: Alyse Young (1647), Mary Johnson (1648), Joan Carrington (1651), John Carrington (1651), Goody Basset (1651), Goody Knapp (1653), Lydia Gilbert (1654), Mary Sanford (1662), Rebecca Greensmith (1662), Nathaniel Greensmith (1662), and Mary Barnes (1662)

Resources
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/16/nyregion/entertaining-the-devil-in-connecticut.html

https://ctstatelibrary.org/witchcraft-in-connecticut/

https://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/hg/colonialresearch/witchcraft

https://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-R-0718.htm

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/witch-hunts-connecticut/

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/alse-young-witch/

http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/17docs.html

The European Witch Hunt (book)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giles_Corey

https://www.history.com/news/before-salem-the-first-american-witch-hunt

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/jun/08/artsandhumanities.highereducation

https://www.courant.com/community/windsor/hc-wn-windsor-witch-trials-0608-20170606-story.html

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/mary-johnson-witch/

https://www.courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-taking-note-buchanan-windsor-witches-0324-20190324-mw6ygw65bjc23pkg6uyqr3bfbi-story.html

https://www.facebook.com/ctwitchmemorial/posts/why-did-rebecca-greensmith-confess-to-being-a-witch-in-an-open-court-particular-/2313572985596922/

https://www.sylviaprincebooks.com/blog/2017/penis-snatching-witches

https://www.legendsofamerica.com/lydia-gilbert-witch/

https://www.onsegermountain.org/witchcraft.html
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The Mysterious Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

9/22/2022

1 Comment

 
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     By the time Amelia Earhart set out to be the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, a journey that was to be her last, she had already broken more aeronautic records than any woman in history. She was an adventurer, a trend-setter, a successful entrepreneur, a celebrity, and a voice for women; and in the short time she was a pilot, she became the most recognized aviator in the world. 
     Earhart’s attempt to be the first woman to circumnavigate the globe began on May 21, 1937. She took off from Oakland Municipal Airport in San Francisco Bay in her personally designed Lockheed Electra 10E. Making the flight with her was Fred Noonan, a skilled navigator who was experienced in both marine navigation and flight navigation. The first leg of the trip was an unpublicized flight from Oakland, California to Miami, Florida. When she arrived, she publicly announced her plans to fly around the world.
     Earhart and Noonan departed Miami on June 1, 1937, making numerous stops in South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Southeast Asia before arriving at Lae, New Guinea, on June 29. By now, they had completed about 22,000 miles of the voyage. On July 2, she and Noonan departed from Lae with about 1100 gallons of gasoline.
     They had to fly another 2,500 miles before they reached their next stop, Howland Island – an incredibly small, uninhabited coral island in the Pacific Ocean. A special airstrip had been constructed on the island to accommodate the planned refueling stopover, after which she would head to Hawaii, and finally to Oakland, California. 
     The Coast Guard cutter Itasca was waiting at Howland Island to guide Earhart. In 1937, we didn’t have radar, so the Itasca was sending up smoke from the ship's funnel to help Earhart spot the island. The expected flying time was about 20 hours, and the aircraft was expected to arrive at Howland the morning of July 2. The reason she was to arrive on the same date as she left Lae is that she would be crossing the international date line. 
     Up to this point, Earhart and Noonan had relied on radio communication to send updates about their location, and to help get them safely from one location to another. But from the start, there were serious problems. Neither Earhart nor Noonan knew Morse Code, so she decided to get rid of the telegraph code key transmitter on her plane, feeling it would just be "dead weight". Instead of Morse code, Earhart planned to communicate by voice at higher bandwidths. 
     In addition to ditching the telegraph transmitter, she made another colossal mistake. She also got rid of a trailing antenna that would have allowed her to use the 500 KHz marine frequency. Without this antenna, she would only be able to use a limited number of frequencies to communicate with those on the ground. But ditching the trailing antenna did something far more dangerous. It prevented ships and marine shore direction finding stations from taking radio bearings on the plane, so no one on the ground would have any way of knowing where she was if she lost radio communication.  
     Fourteen hours and fifteen minutes into her flight, the Itasca received a garbled transmission from Earhart. She said something about ‘cloudy weather’, but the rest of the message was unintelligible. Though the messages themselves would eventually become clearer, their content became worrying. Earhart radioed, "We are circling but cannot see the island. We cannot hear you." Although the Itasca had been transmitting continuously for hours, she apparently had only received one message from the ship. 
     Earhart continued to broadcast on schedule, roughly on the hour and half-hour, and the strength of her radio signal indicated that she was close to Howland Island, but she said that she was still unable to see it.
     Howland Island is very low, and the shadow of clouds could have made it difficult to distinguish the island from shadows. Because the island they were aiming for was so small, even a slight error in navigation would put them in a perilous situation.
     Earhart’s radio transmissions are the real beginning of her mysterious disappearance. 
     6:44 a.m. – Earhart radioes, “Will whistle in microphone, about 200 miles out approximately, now whistling.” She was whistling into the microphone in the hopes that someone could hear her and get a bearing on the plane. But for some unknown reason, she stopped transmitting the whistling sounds after a short time and wasn’t heard from again until a half-hour later. 
     7:11 a.m. – Earhart radios, "Please take bearing on us and report in half hour. I will make noise in mic -- about 100 miles out."
     8:12 a.m. – Earhart radios, “We must be on you but cannot see you, but gas is running low, been unable to reach you by radio, we are flying at 1000 feet."
     8:28 a.m. – Earhart radios, "We are circling but cannot hear you, go ahead on 7500 with a long count either now or on the schedule time on 1/2 hour." 
     8:30 a.m. – Earhart radios, "We received your signals but unable to get a minimum. Please take bearing on us and answer 3105 with voice."
Amelia Earhart’s last confirmed words were spoken on July 2, 1937 at 8:43 a.m.. 
     “We are on line 157/337 north and south,” she said. “We will repeat message. We will repeat this on 6210 KCS.” 
After that message, repeated calls from Itasca went unanswered and it was assumed that the Electra had gone down somewhere in the Pacific near Howland Island. 
     Within hours of Earhart's disappearance, President Roosevelt authorized a massive search-and-rescue mission of unprecedented scale. Ships and planes from the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard scoured some 250,000 square miles of ocean. But after searching for two weeks, no trace of the plane, or of Earhart and Noonan was ever found. 
     In its official report, the Navy said that Earhart had run out of fuel, crashed into the Pacific, and drowned. But from the very beginning, not everyone agreed. And over the years, many theories have come out and have been put to the test. Some seem very logical, scientific, and plausible while others are simply outlandish. 

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     In my opinion, the most convoluted theory about Earhart’s disappearance is that she not only survived the crash, but that she returned to the US and lived out the rest of her life under an assumed name in a small town in New Jersey. The name that Earhart supposedly took, that being Irene Bolam, was an elaborate cypher that spelled out in degrees and minutes of latitude and longitude the precise location of the beach where Earhart crashed after being shot down by the Japanese. But Irene Bolam wasn’t just some fictional character. She was a real person, a businesswoman and resident of Monroe Township, New Jersey. 
     In 1965, Joseph Gervais was invited to speak at a gathering of retired pilots. Gervais was a highly decorated veteran of World War II, The Korean War, and Vietnam. He served as a command pilot of  B-24, B-29 and C-130 aircraft, with over 16,000 hours of flight time.
     After speaking at the event, Gervais was introduced to Irene Bolam by one of Amelia Earhart's friends. As soon as he laid eyes on her, Gervais immediately thought that Bolam looked like an older version of Amelia Earhart. 
     Besides the physical similarities between the two women, Gervais claimed that Mrs. Bolam wore two medals that day – awards that had been presented to Earhart during her career. From that day on, Gervais began researching her past to prove that Irene Bolam was in fact Amelia Earhart. 
Using Gervais' shoddy research, in 1970 author Joe Klaas published the book Amelia Earhart Lives. After the book’s release Mrs. Bolam furiously denied the book’s allegations saying, “I am not a mysterious woman, I am not Amelia Earhart—this is nonsense!” 
     McGraw-Hill pulled the book from the market shortly after its release, but it was too little too late. Bolem submitted a lengthy affidavit refuting the claim, then filed a $1.5 million lawsuit against the publisher. The evidence Bolem presented to the court included her 1937 private pilot's license, and her marriage certificate. 
     After the book was published, Earhart researchers examined photos of Bolam taken the day she met Gervais. Although Gervais claimed that the medals she wore that day belonged to Earhart, upon closer examination it was clear that they didn’t even resemble those awarded to Earhart.  
The defendants filed a motion with the court to dismiss the case, but it was denied. In 1976, McGraw-Hill reached a private settlement with Bolam for an undisclosed amount.
     Upon Bolam's death, Gervais sought permission to photograph and fingerprint the body, but it was denied. In 2006, a criminal forensic expert was hired by National Geographic to study and compare photographs of Earhart and Bolam. He cited many measurable facial differences between them, concluding that the two people were not the same. 
     End of story? Not quite. Three additional books were subsequently published that continued to claim that Mrs. Bolam and Amelia Earhart were one and the same person despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
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     One widely embraced theory of what really happened to Amelia Earhart is that she and Noonan missed Howland Island, then crash landed on a remote island. 
     Flight accident investigator Ric Gillespie has been investigating Earhart’s disappearance for several decades. In his book, Finding Amelia: The True Story of the Earhart Disappearance, Gillespie hypothesizes that Earhart and Noonan didn’t crash into the Pacific, but rather landed on the reef of Gardner Island, now known as Nikumaroro. The island is on the 157/133 north-south line that Earhart mentioned in her last transmission. It’s just 356 miles from Howland Island, her intended destination, and it was the only nearby landmass substantial enough to serve as a landing strip. 
     Nikumaroro was well within the Electra’s range, even taking into consideration the fact that it was low on fuel. Gillespie believes that after crash landing on the shore, Earhart and Noonan sent radio transmissions to the Itasca. These messages were never picked up by the Coast Guard cutter, but many believe that they were heard by dozens of civilians around the world. 
     Immediately after Earhart's last official radio transmission, other radio messages were picked up – not by the military, but by people who just happened to be listening to their radios. They were shocked when they heard Earhart’s pleas for help, and they reported the messages to the authorities. While some of these transmissions were obvious hoaxes, many researchers believe that several others were genuine. 
     What Gillespie found most intriguing about the radio signals that were picked up in the week following Earhart’s disappearance is their alignment with the high and low tides on Nikumaroro. If the plane landed during low tide and was stuck in shallow water, then Earhart and Noonan could only send out distress calls when the plane's engine could run without flooding. This would have been only when the tide was low, usually late at night, or early in the morning. And indeed, transmissions that were heard by various people around the world occurred only when the tide at Nikumaroro was low. 
     Another compelling bit of evidence about these mysterious radio transmissions is the fact that private citizens who didn’t know each other all heard similar messages. At first, they were pleading for help, then after a few days they became more desperate. 
     Five days after the disappearance, on July 7, Thelma Lovelace of St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, heard a woman’s voice coming over her radio. “Can you read me? Can you read me?” the voice said. “This is Amelia Earhart … Please come in. We have taken in water. My navigator is badly hurt. We are in need of medical care and must have help. We can’t hold on much longer.” Gillespie believes that this was Earhart’s last broadcast to be picked up by a civilian, or anyone else for that matter, and that the pair died as castaways. 
     You might ask, ‘If the Navy was listening for Earhart’s radio messages, then why were civilians able to pick them up when the military weren’t?’ Well, for one thing, the Electra’s radio was designed to communicate only within a few hundred miles. If the plane crashed 356 miles away, direct radio broadcast wouldn’t have been heard. 
     In order to understand how civilians could have heard Earhart’s calls thousands of miles away, you have to know a little bit about how radio signals work. In addition to regular signals, radios simultaneously transmit harmonic signals. These travel upward, skip off the ionosphere, then bounce back to earth. This type of ionosphere-bounce transmission is popular with Ham radio operators because these bounced signals travel far greater distances than direct signals. So, even if a direct radio signal couldn’t be heard by ships over 300 miles away, one that bounced off the ionosphere could easily have been heard thousands of miles away.
     Critics of the theory that the plane crash landed on Nikumaroro point out that three Navy planes flew over the island on July 9, a week after Earhart’s disappearance. They reported seeing signs of recent habitation, but they didn’t see any sign of Earhart, Noonan or the plane. One theory suggests that the tide dragged the plane out onto the coral reef on July 7, and it was pushed under the water where it couldn’t be seen from the air two days later. 
     Skeptics question why Earhart and Noonan weren’t spotted during the three fly-overs. Although Nikumaroro is a small island, it’s covered with thick, dense vegetation. If Noonan was gravely injured when the plane crash landed. It’s possible that he died soon after the last transmission. Earhart may have also been injured. If she was too weak to come out from whatever shelter she sought on the island, if she was unconscious, or even if she simply happened to not be on the beach when the plane passed over, she wouldn’t have been spotted from the air. 
     One gruesome theory about why Earhart and Noonan’s bodies were never found on Nikumaroro has to do with one of the island’s inhabitants – the giant coconut crab. These monstrous creatures grow to over three feet long, and can weigh as much as 9 lbs. Their large claws have the force of approximately 675 lbs of pressure. For comparison, the strength of a human grip is only around 67 lbs. 
     Experiments involving pig carcasses have shown that coconut crabs can remove the flesh from a body within two weeks, and they have been seen dragging the bones away. So, it’s possible – even probable – that if Earhart and Noonan died on the island, the crabs would have picked their bodies clean of flesh, then dragged the bones to various parts of the island, or into the ocean.
     Over the years, many expeditions have been launched to find such evidence, and artifacts have been discovered that suggest Earhart and Noonan may have survived for a time on the island. A number of artifacts were found, but to date no one has been able to directly connect these artifacts to Earhart or Noonan
      In 1940, a British expedition arrived on Nikumaroro to see if it would be suitable for a settlement. As they scouted the island, they came across a human skull and other bones. These were shipped to Fiji where they were studied by a doctor at Central Medical School. He took a series of measurements that he recorded in his notes, and he concluded that the bones didn’t belong to Earhart, but rather to a “middle-aged stocky male about 5’5″ in height.” Everyone was so convinced that the bones didn’t belong to Earhart that they simply lost track of them, and they were eventually lost.  
     Today, many believe that the doctor was incorrect in his assessment of the bones recovered on the island. A study published in 2019 by Professor Richard Jantz from the University of Tennessee re-assessed the 1940 measurements. Using modern forensics and a computer program designed to aid in determining age and gender from bone measurements, Jantz concluded that the lengths of the bones were similar to Amelia Earhart’s. But of course, without the actual bones themselves, we can never be certain. 
     In 2019, famed ocean explorer Robert Ballard led an expedition on Nikumaroro to try to locate Earhart's plane. After days of searching the ocean using state of the art equipment and technology, Ballard did not find any evidence of the plane or any associated wreckage of it. Allison Fundis, Ballard's chief operating officer stated: "We felt like if her plane was there, we would have found it pretty early in the expedition."
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     One of the most intriguing Earhart theories is that she was on a spy mission for FDR who was her close friend. Roosevelt secretly arranged for her to deviate from her route to Howland Island in order to determine whether the Japanese were building airfields and naval bases on nearby islands. The theory goes that the Electra was shot down by the Japanese, Earhart and Noonan were imprisoned on the island of Saipan, and that they died or were executed about a month before U.S. troops invaded.
     The hypothesis fits the recollections of many who were residents on the island when Earhart disappeared. They said that two white pilots were brought to the island in 1937. The witnesses all claimed that one of them was a tall white woman with short hair, and that she was dressed like a man. Some reported seeing the pair executed. Others said that Noonan was executed, but that Earhart died of dysentery. 
     After the war was over, Earhart and Noonan’s bodies were supposedly exhumed by the US military and shipped back to the United States. The US kept quiet about the recovered bodies to avoid any further incidents with Japan after the war. 
     No US military or government documents exist to lead credence to the story, and the Japanese government continues to maintain that they had nothing to do with Earhart’s disappearance. But many people still believe that the pair were captured by the Japanese, and that they were held at Saipan prison camp. And there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that this is exactly what happened.
     Many theorists point to the transcripts of Earhart’s last radio transmissions. She claimed to have been unable to hear anyone as she made her way to Howland Island, but this might have been a lie. If she was flying a secret mission to spy on the Japanese, the military would have known that her radio conversations were being monitored. She would have been instructed to say that she couldn’t hear the transmission, and that she couldn’t get a read on the Itasca because of radio problems. This would have allowed her enough time to fly over the Marshall Islands, gather information, then return after pretending to have gotten back on course again. 
     Proponents of this theory point out that Earhart’s behavior during the time she was supposedly lost over the Pacific (and desperately low on fuel) was nothing short of bizarre. Although she was scheduled to broadcast on the hour or half-hour, she was smart enough to know that she should have abandoned that schedule in an emergency. 
     Throughout the period that she was supposedly lost, there was a total absence of urgency in her transmissions. Considering her situation, she should have been trying continuously to establish two-way communications with Itasca. She and Noonan both knew that sending very long transmissions was the only way the Itasca could get a fix on them. But during each of her broadcasts, she never stayed on for more than seven seconds. Why would she do such a thing? To prevent anyone from getting a fix on her position.
     Mike Campbell’s impressive book, Amelia Earhart: The Truth At Last, takes a detailed look at all of the missing Earhart theories. He’s convinced that Earhart and Noonan were sent on a secret mission by FDR, that their plane was shot down by the Japanese and that the Electra was recovered, and that they were prisoners on Saipan. He believes that Roosevelt had direct knowledge of Earhart’s capture, and that files and documents that would prove this, such as intercepts of Japanese transmissions, were removed or destroyed. There was a massive cover-up to protect the president because if word ever got out that he had essentially abandoned Earhart on Saipan, and never even attempted a rescue, his political career would have been in shambles.

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     Amelia Earhart was just forty-years-old when she vanished somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, but her impact on the world of aviation is immeasurable. She is undoubtedly one of the most influential and famous pilots in history, not only because of the stunning number of accomplishments she made in the field of aeronautics, but also because of the legacy of her disappearance.     
​     This past July marked the eighty-fifth anniversary of Earhart’s disappearance, and interest in the mystery continues. Books and articles continue to be written, expeditions are launched to investigate the areas where she is thought to have ended up, old theories are tested and new ones are born.
     In writing about her life as a pilot, Earhart once described how she felt at the end of a long flight. Whatever the truth is about her disappearance, I think her words best sum up her sense of adventure, even at the end of a long and dangerous journey. She wrote: 
     “There is no doubt that the last hour of any flight is the hardest. If there are any clouds about to make shadows, one is likely to see much imaginary land. As I approached shore I strained my eyes to see something recognizable, and there was nothing. However, I noticed a low place in the hills, and I thought, like the bear, I would go over the mountains to see what I could see.”

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Resources
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/09/16/Businessman-says-Japanese-executed-Amelia-Earhart/9275527227200/
https://earharttruth.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/bill-prymak-radio-experts-analyze-amelia-earharts-bizarre-radio-behavior-during-her-last-flight/
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Brandenburg/signalcatalog2.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5117527/America-hid-Amelia-Earharts-execution-Japanese.html
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/man-claims-uncle-amelia-earhart-1937-saipan-article-1.3658703
https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/amelia-earhart-and-profession-air-navigation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart#World_flight_in_1937
Bermuda Triangle
https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/09/world/amelia-earhart-aviation-mysteries
https://interestingengineering.com/culture/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-amelia-earhart-finally-solved-after-81-years
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amelia-earhart-bones-found-in-1940-belong-to-pilot-researcher-claims/
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1846670_1846800_1846828,00.html
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Amelia-Earhart
https://www.newsweek.com/amelia-earhart-conspiracy-theories-hollow-earth-explained-1612582
https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/06/us/amelia-earhart-mystery-theories
https://www.archives.gov/news/topics/earhart
https://earharttruth.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/marshalls-stamps-reflect-fact-of-amelia-earharts-mili-atoll-landing/
https://earharttruth.wordpress.com/2021/04/21/g-p-putnams-bizarre-search-for-amelia-part-ii/comment-page-1/#comment-17484
https://www.history.com/news/does-this-photo-show-amelia-earhart-after-her-plane-disappeared
https://earthlymission.com/coconut-crab-worlds-largest-land-crab-amelia-earhart-plane-crash/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/24/amelia-earhart-birthday-distress-call/782617002/
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/AEdescr2.html
https://www.nwnewsnetwork.org/history-and-culture/2019-08-16/photo-sleuthing-by-northwest-man-backs-up-new-amelia-earhart-search
https://www.history.com/topics/exploration/what-happened-to-amelia-earhart
https://www.sandboxx.us/blog/this-one-guy-might-be-the-reason-we-havent-found-amelia-earhart/
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/MapsandPhotos/maps/worldflight.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7unHEeJkKww 


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The Bell Witch: America's Greatest Ghost Story

8/31/2022

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     The Bell Witch has been called America’s greatest ghost story. The story centers on John Bell and his family who came under attack by an invisible entity in 1817. Although the entire family was harassed by the spirit, the main victims were John, and his daughter Elizabeth, affectionately known as Betsy. 
     While the facts of the case were certainly elaborated upon and added to over the years, it’s likely that the story is based on actual events. All of the characters are real people whose lives have been meticulously researched and documented. 
     The story begins with John Bell, a farmer who lived with his wife and six children on a farm in Adams, Tennessee. One cold winter morning in 1817, John was out hunting when something caught his eye. It was an animal, and it was standing in the middle of a corn field about 30 yards away. It was clearly some kind of a large dog, but John had never seen anything like it before. It was huge, and its head was especially tremendous, almost too big for its body which was covered in dark, matted fur. 
     As John stood staring at this dog-like creature, the beast slowly crouched down low, looking as if it was about to charge at him. John quickly raised his gun and fired at it before it had a chance to move. The shot rang out and echoed through the fields. He was certain that he had struck the animal, but when the smoke cleared and he looked to see where it had fallen, it was gone. John took a few furtive steps forward, then walked over to the spot where he had struck the animal. The field was empty. The creature had simply vanished.
     John tried to put the strange dog-like creature out of his mind, but a few days later, a man enslaved by the Bell family told John that he too had seen a strange dog. He said that several times he had been followed by a large black dog while walking in the evening.
     Soon, other family members began witnessing unusual things on the property. One day, John's son Drew saw a strange bird perched on a fence. He described it as being of  extraordinary size. Being the son of a farmer and a hunter, Drew knew all of the wildlife in the area, but this was unlike any bird he had ever seen before. When he approached it, it flapped its massive wings, took off, and flew into the forest.
     One day, Betsy and her sisters saw a young girl as they were walking among the big forest trees near the house. The little girl was wearing a green dress. She was holding onto one of the low hanging branches and swinging back and forth on it. When the girl saw the sisters approaching, she came down from the branch and ran off into the woods. Search as they might, they weren’t able to find the girl. 
     Soon, the family began hearing strange sounds in and around the house. This included the sound of wings flapping against the ceilings, and the sound of rats gnawing on bedposts. They also heard the sound of someone choking or being strangled, followed by the sound of dragging chains, and the crash of heavy objects hitting the floor.  
     One night, as the family sat together in the kitchen, they heard the deafening sound of beds being pulled apart and thrown about the room accompanied by the sound of fighting dogs.  They investigated, but the source of the noise was never discovered. No rats were found in the home despite thorough searching, and the furniture was always found to be unharmed. 
     The phenomena began to grow in intensity as the covers were pulled from the children’s beds as they slept. Soon the entity began pulling the children’s hair, and scratching them. 
     Richard Bell was just a young boy when the strange activity began, but he never forgot the terrifying harassment his family was forced to endure during that time. In 1846 he wrote a memoir about his experience called Our Family Trouble: The Story of the Bell Witch as Detailed by Richard Williams Bell. In it, he wrote: 
     I was a boy when the incidents known as the Bell Witch took place. Knocking on the front door, and on the outer walls of the house had been going on for sometime before I knew of it. I was usually asleep when these things happened, and father believed that it was some mischievous person trying to frighten the family. Then, after the unexplainable demonstrations became known to all of us, father enjoined secrecy upon every member of the family, and it was kept a profound secret until it finally became intolerable. 
     On a Sunday night in 1818, just after the family had retired to bed, a noise commenced in my room like a rat gnawing vigorously on the bed post. John and Drew got up to kill the rat. But the moment they were out of bed the noise ceased. They examined the bed frame, but discovered no marks. 
As soon as they returned to bed the noise commenced again, and thus it continued until some time after midnight. During that time, we were all up a half dozen times or more searching the room all over, every nook and corner for the rat, turning over everything. But we could find nothing, not even a crevice by which a rat could possibly enter. This kind of noise continued from night to night, and week after week, but all of our investigations were in vain. 
     After a few days, the sound began to change location. When we would search for the rat in our room, the same noise would instead appear in sister Elizabeth's chamber, disturbing her, and arousing all the family. 
After a while, the noise was accompanied by a scratching sound, like a dog clawing on the floor. This sound increased in force until it became evidently too strong for a rat. After this, we went through every room in the house and carefully examined the furniture, beds and clothing, but nothing irregular could be found. 
     These demonstrations continued to increase, and soon the bed coverings commenced slipping off at the foot of the beds, as if gradually drawn by someone. Occasionally, this was accompanied by a noise like someone was choking or being strangled. All the while the vicious gnawing at the bedpost continued, and there was no such thing as sleep to be thought of until the noise ceased, which was generally between one and three o'clock in the morning.
     One day, the family had all retired early, and I had just fallen into a sweet doze when I felt my hair beginning to twist. Then there was a sudden jerk, which raised me up. The pulling was so sudden and so violent that it felt like the top of my head had been taken off. Immediately, Joel yelled out in great fright, then Elizabeth began screaming in her room. Every night after that, something was continually pulling at her hair after she retired to bed. After this, the main feature of the phenomenon was that of pulling the cover off the beds as fast as we could replace it, as well as other demonstrations.
     Although we had kept the secret within our family up to this time, Father finally decided to solicit the advice of his nearest neighbor and most intimate friend, Mr. James Johnson in the hope that he might be able to solve the mystery. So Mr. Johnson and his wife, at father's request, came over to spend a night in the investigation. 
     Soon after we had all retired, the disturbance commenced as usual – gnawing, scratching, knocking on the walls, overturning chairs, and pulling the cover off of beds. Every act was exhibited as if on purpose to show Mr. Johnson what could be done, appearing in his room, as in other rooms. As soon as someone would light a lamp in one room, the noise would cease and the trouble would begin in another. 
     Mr. Johnson was determined to try speaking to it, which he did.  
"In the name of the Lord,” he said, “what or who are you? What do you want and why are you here?" 
     This appeared to silence the noise for a considerable time, but it finally commenced again with increased vigor, pulling the cover from the beds in spite of all resistance, repeating other demonstrations, going from one room to another, and becoming increasingly frightful. 
     Mr. Johnson advised father to invite other friends into the investigation, and to try all means for detecting the mystery. My father consented to this, and from that time on the details of the strange happenings in our home were made public. 
     The persecutions of Elizabeth were increased to an extent that caused the family serious apprehensions. Her cheeks were frequently crimsoned as by a hard blow from an open hand, and her hair was pulled until she would scream with pain. It was suggested that she should spend the nights with one of the neighbors to get rid of the trouble, and this was acted upon. Betsy went to a number of different neighbor’s houses, but it made no difference.    The trouble followed her with the same severity, disturbing the family where she went as it did at home, nor were we in any way relieved. 
     The phenomena was gradually increasing and developing, and it soon proved itself to be of an intelligent character. For example, when asked a question in a way that it could be answered by numbers, the answers would come in raps that sounded like a man knocking on the wall, the bureau or the bedpost with his fist. The answers were invariably correct. 
     Another odd thing began to occur frequently. When father, the boys, and field hands were coming in late from work, chunks of wood and stones would fall along the way as if tossed by someone, but we could never discover from whence, or what direction they came. 
     In addition to the demonstrations already described, it began slapping people on the face. It was especially brutal in this respect to those who resisted the action of pulling the cover from the bed, and to those who came as detectives to expose the trick. The blows were heard distinctly, like the open palm of a heavy hand, and the sting was keenly felt. And it continued to pull my hair, and to make Joel squall much in the same way as it had up to this point.” 
     The phenomena continued to develop force, and visitors persisted in urging the witch to talk, and tell what was wanted. Finally, it began whistling when spoken to, in a low broken sound, as if trying to speak in a whistling voice. The voice gradually gained strength in articulating, and soon the utterances became distinct in a low whisper that could be understood. 
     This new development added to the sensation already created. The news spread, and people came in larger numbers. The great anxiety concerning the mystery prompted many questions in the effort to induce the witch to disclose its own identity and purpose. Finally, in answer to the question, Who are you and what do you want? a reply came. 
     "I am a spirit,” the voice said. “I was once very happy but have been disturbed." This was uttered in a very feeble voice, but sufficiently distinct to be understood by all present, and this was all the information that could be elicited for the time being.”
     Richard’s narrative went on to tell about the various explanations the spirit gave of why it had appeared. At last Reverend James Gunn asked that it tell him who it really was. The spirit said that it was Old Kate Batts’ witch, and that its purpose was to torment John, who she referred to as "Old Jack'', and to kill him. 
     Mrs. Kate Batts was a member of the community who was known to be kind hearted, and a good neighbor toward those she liked, but she was a very eccentric woman with a difficult personality. Whether or not the spirit was telling the truth about its origins, it was thereafter known as Kate, and it answered readily when addressed by that name.
      Betsy Bell was engaged to a local man named Joshua Gardner, and the witch made it clear that she was not to marry this man. ​​Kate’s voice was heard by many people saying that it forbade the girl to marry Joshua. At times the witch made cutting remarks about the couple as they walked about the property together. Other times, Kate spoke to Betsy in a soft melancholy voice that would start out as a distant sighing that gradually got nearer and nearer. Then, with gentle pleadings in loud whispers Kate would say, "Please Betsy Bell, don't have Joshua Gardner. Please Betsy Bell, don't marry Joshua Gardner." 
     Whatever the reason for Kate’s absolute opposition to the couple starting a life together, the witch tormented the poor girl in every way imaginable – pulling the covers from her bed as fast as they could be replaced, knocking over chairs in her room, and keeping up a continual gabbing of nonsensical talk and laughter. It pinched the girl so hard that she screamed, and it slapped her cheeks with such force that red marks appeared on her skin. At all hours of the day it pulled the girl’s hair, and stuck pins in her body.  
     One day, Betsy’s friend Partheny Thorn watched in horror as the hair combs were pulled violently from Betsy’s hair. Then the witch broke out with hilarious laughter, “Ha! Ha! Betsy. If Josh could see you now he would envy me.” 
     Another favorite trick of the witch was that of tampering with Betsy's shoes. One minute the laces would be tied so tight that the girl couldn’t loosen them, the next, the shoes would be unlaced and jerked from her feet. Sometimes when Elizabeth was getting ready for bed, the witch would say, “Betsy, let me unlace your shoes.” A split second later, the girl’s shoes would be pulled off of her feet and thrown across the room.
     The Bell family’s harrowing ordeal continued unabated for the next four years, and in 1821 Kate finally fulfilled her deadly promise. A strange vial of medicine was found in the cupboard. No one knew where it came from, nor what it contained. As they were asking one another about the vial, Kate said, “I put the vial there for Old Jack, and had given him a dose to kill him.” When asked how she administered the poison, she said “By pouring it into the dinner pot.”
     Several men who had called in to see Mr. Bell that day heard what the witch said. Someone advised John Jr. to test the contents of the vial on a cat. He gave the cat a very small portion of the liquid and it instantly went into convulsions. The cat squalled, whirled around, then died a few minutes later.
     A few days after the vial was found, John Bell fell into a coma and died. The family was inconsolable, but Kate hadn’t still hadn't finished tormenting the family. It’s said that she interrupted the mourners by laughing and singing drinking songs. 
     After all that her family had endured over the years, Betsy was unwilling to risk subjecting them to further harassment from the spirit, so after her father’s death she called off her engagement to Joshua Gardner. The witch rejoiced at her victory, and she finally stopped harassing Betsy. 
     Soon after, the entity told the family it was going away, but that it would return in seven years. In 1828 the witch did indeed return as promised, this time to Lucy and her sons Richard and Joel. It commenced with similar antics as it had before, but the family chose not to encourage it. After a few months, Kate, the Bell Witch finally left and was never heard from again.
     The Bell Witch remains the most famous, beguiling and enduring American paranormal tale ever told. Today, more than two hundred years later, we’re left with many unanswered questions. Was Kate a witch, a demon, a ghost, a poltergeist? Was she the result of some form of mass hysteria, or was she simply a legend – a tall tale based on actual events that grew up over time? The truth is, we may never know. And that’s OK, because life without a little mystery just isn’t very much fun, now is it?
 
Resources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Witch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_(farmer)
https://sharetngov.tnsosfiles.com/tsla/exhibits/myth/bellwitch.htm
https://patfitzhugh.wordpress.com/2017/07/09/big-development-in-the-bell-witch-case/
https://www.wkrn.com/special-reports/haunted-tennessee/haunted-tennessee-which-bell-witch-legend-do-you-believe/
http://www.bellwitch.org/story.htm
https://www.scribd.com/document/359692589/an-authenticated-history-of-the-famous-bell-witch-by-martin-van-buren-ingram-1894
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Religion and the Paranormal - My Interview with Author Richard D. Lewis

6/21/2022

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I would be willing to bet that most of you have never once looked up the definition for the word religion. But if you have, then you discovered that there is no definitive definition of the word. All are either too narrow or too broad. Either they exclude belief systems that many would categorize as religious, or they suggest that just about any strong belief can be considered religious.

But when it comes to the word paranormal, the definition becomes much more concise. Paranormal is generally defined as “denoting events or phenomena that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding.” Simple, right?

The question is, are religion and the paranormal related in any way? When you compare the two, the line between religion and the paranormal becomes blurred because almost every religion has beliefs and stories that can easily be categorized as paranormal. Take the story of Moses and the burning bush, for example. Moses is tending sheep one day when he sees a bush that’s burning but is not consumed, after which he hears a voice speaking to him from inside the flames. 
If someone had a similar mysterious encounter today, they would probably categorize it as a paranormal experience.     

This month’s Haunted Happenings Podcast is my fascinating interview with Richard D. Lewis, author of The Paranormal Christian, and The Paranormal Christian II: The Quickening. Richard examines paranormal phenomena through the lens of the Bible, including out-of-body experiences, reincarnation, spirit communication, encounters with angels, ghosts, cryptids, UFOs, and extraterrestrial beings. 

To hear the podcast, click HERE to listen on iTunes, or HERE to listen on Spotify –  and please leave a comment! 


Paranormal Tidbits: Stories of the Strange Found Online

With the US government finally releasing video evidence of UFOs spotted by military pilots, I thought it would be fitting to take a look at a few interesting UFO and alien abduction cases. 

The Pascagoula Alien Abduction Case – In 1973, 42-year-old Charles Hickson and 19-year-old Calvin Parker reported to the Jackson County, Mississippi Sheriff's office that they had been abducted by aliens during a fishing trip. Parker and Hickson claimed they were "conscious but paralyzed" while three "creatures" with "robotic slit-mouths" and "crab-like pincers" took them aboard an alien spacecraft and subjected them to an examination. Click HERE to see a recent interview with Calvin Parker.

Siblings Story of Being Abducted by Aliens – In 1994, Randall Nickersson and his sister, Glynda, appeared on the "The Oprah Show" to claim they were visited by aliens during their childhood. The siblings recalled their terrifying encounters and explained why they genuinely believe they were abducted by extraterrestrials. Randall went on to make the 2022 documentary ‘Ariel Phenomenon’ (see below).
Click HERE to see the Oprah Winfrey show interview. 


‘Ariel Phenomenon’ Film Trailer - The documentary film Ariel Phenomenon explores an extraterrestrial encounter witnessed by over sixty school children in Africa in 1994. As a Harvard professor, a BBC war reporter, and past students investigate, they struggle to answer the question: “What happens when you experience something so extraordinary that nobody believes you?”
Click HERE to see the trailer which includes short interview clips with some of the children. The film is available to rent/stream at https://arielphenomenon.com/
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The Winchester Mystery House

5/31/2022

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     We all love a good mystery, and in this month's newsletter I explore one of the strangest mysteries of the 20th century -- The Winchester Mystery House.
     In 1886, Sarah Winchester inherited a fortune and moved from New Haven, Connecticut to San Jose, California. It's said that a psychic medium instructed her to move there, and to build a magnificent house in order to appease the spirits of those killed by the guns manufactured by the Winchester Rifle Company she had inherited. But there was one catch -- if she ever stopped building onto the house, she would die!
     Mrs. Winchester drew up plans for rooms without any knowledge of architecture -- plans supposedly given to her by the spirits. She hired carpenters to work around the clock, night and day to build her incredible house. Building went on continuously until her death in 1922. Today, the 161 room labyrinth of a mansion is known as the Winchester Mystery House.
     The Winchester Mystery House is said to be haunted. Footsteps have been heard shuffling to and from Mrs. Winchester's bedroom; doorknobs have been seen turning by themselves; people's clothing has been tugged by unseen hands during tours; the ghost of a worker has been spotted by tour guides and guests; and a surveillance camera picked up this eerie light on one of the balconies when the house was totally empty.
     The podcast version of the story has a LOT more details. Click HERE listen on iTunes, or HERE to listen on Spotify. To see interior photos of the house, click HERE for the slideshow.
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Alien Abduction: The Betty and Barney Hill Story

3/5/2022

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     On September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were heading home from their honeymoon when they encountered a UFO in the skies over New Hampshire. The craft eventually forced their car to stop. There, hovering over the road was a huge, disk shaped craft. It had windows along one side, and looking out of them were more than a dozen beings.
     The Hills drove off in a panic, but a series of strange, rhythmic beeping sounds put them into an altered mental state and they lost consciousness. Two hours later they found themselves driving on a different road with no memory of what had just happened to them. 
     When the couple arrived home, they were totally baffled by the UFO encounter, and they had no memory of the missing time. Betty and Barney went into separate rooms and drew pictures of what they remembered the craft looking like. The drawings were remarkably similar. 
     The following day, Betty discovered that the dress she had been wearing was torn in several places, and it was covered with a strange pink powder. It was also discolored, and the fabric was deteriorated. Most of the powder blew away when she hung the dress on the clothes line, but enough remained to be analyzed years later. 
     When Barney unpacked the car, he found that the strap to the binoculars the couple used to view the UFO was snapped in half. He also discovered that the tops of his shoes were scratched and scuffed up as if they had been dragged along the ground. 
     Betty took the advice of a friend of her sister who was a physicist and used a compass to test the car for any anomalies. When she got to the back of the car, she noticed about a dozen highly polished circular spots on the trunk's surface that hadn't been there before their trip. When she put the compass on the spots, its needle spun around wildly.
     The Hills contacted Pease Air Force Base and submitted a UFO report. They were taken very seriously by the officer who took their information, and their report ended up in Project Bluebook--the US army's investigation into unidentified flying objects. The Hills later learned that another UFO sighting of an identical craft was seen by military personnel that same night, and that jets were scrambled to follow it. 
     In 1964, the Hills sought the help of a psychiatrist named Dr. Simon who was also a trained hypnotherapist. Over a period of six months the couple were hypnotized separately, and they gradually began to recall what happened to them during the missing time.
     Under hypnosis, Betty remembered their car stalling on the highway, and that it was surrounded by a dozen strange looking men. They were about four and a half feet tall, had grayish colored skin, and large eyes that wrapped around the sides of their heads. Instead of ears, they just had holes in the sides of their heads. Their mouths were tiny, straight slits.
     The couple was escorted along a path in the woods to a strange metallic craft. Betty walked unassisted, but Barney was in a trance-like state and was dragged along by two creatures. When they got to the ship, Barney recalled his shoes bumping against the doorway of the ship. This explained the scuff marks on his shoes.
     The couple were led into separate rooms and subjected to physical examinations. Skin samples were taken from both of them. Barney said that he thought that a sperm sample had been taken from him. Betty said that the creatures thrust a long needle into her navel as a pregnancy test. 
     Before leaving the ship, one of the creatures who Betty called "the leader" showed her a star map of where he and his crew came from. After the hypnosis session, Betty drew a picture of this star map.
     When the hypnosis sessions were completed, the Hills described the aliens' appearance to an artist who made several drawings. Another artist made a bust of what the creatures looked like. 
     Although the Hills never wanted publicity, their story was leaked to a reporter after they spoke about their UFO encounter at their local church. A newspaper posted a story about their ordeal without their permission. This forced them to go public with their story. They would eventually co-write a book with their hypnotist called 'The Interrupted Journey'. The book would go on to top the New York Times best seller list. It sold over 300,000 copies worldwide. 
     After Barney's death in 1969, Betty continued searching for answers. In the early 1970s, a woman named Marjorie Fish created a three-dimensional model of Betty's map and discovered that the stars matched the Zeta Reticuli star system. While many astronomers were excited by her findings, others were skeptical. The debate about the star map continues to this day. 
     Betty died in 2004, but interest in the couple's case continued. In 2020, the dress Betty had been wearing was found to contain traces of Tellurium and Rhodium. Both are extremely rare on earth, but more common in outer space. Rhodium is one of the most expensive metals on earth. There is no explanation of how these particles ended up on Betty's dress. 
      Many believe the Hills had a genuine alien abduction, but others were skeptical. Critics point out that the aliens the Hills described resembles an alien creature from an episode of the Outer Limits TV show. They also say that Betty's description of the 'pregnancy test' resembled a scene from the movie "Invaders from Mars". The couple denied ever having seen either show.
​     Information recalled under hypnosis is not necessarily accurate. When a traumatic event happens, our minds often fill in the missing information with images and false memories in order to make sense of it. Dr. Simon believed that the couple saw something very frightening in the sky that night which caused them to have amnesia for two hours. While he didn't believe that they were abducted by aliens, he had no explanation for the missing time. 
     Fascination with the Hill's abduction case continues to this day.  The documentary Alien Abduction: The Odyssey of Betty and Barney Hill was released in 2013, and a TV series based on the 2007 book Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill Experience is in the works. 

Resources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_and_Betty_Hill
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2306tufos.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93elxGqDZKg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl1pVatXwbU&t=103s (Betty Hill Interview) 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IToX0l-vYCg (Some interview with Barney and Betty)
https://books.google.com/books?id=-d5EDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhZ24yUpXSM&t=9s (Barney on To Tell the Truth - December 12, 1966)
https://innovation.unh.edu/license-technology/unh-innovation-spotlight-betty-and-barney-hill-collection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STnargCIhxU (The UFO Incident)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010828075745.htm (Hypnosis study)
https://innovation.unh.edu/license-technology/unh-innovation-spotlight-betty-and-barney-hill-collection

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541211/ (Shared Psychotic Disorder)
https://kickasshistory.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-dumb-question-pt-vii-conspiracy-theories-what-about-them/
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February 06th, 2022

2/6/2022

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     It was late afternoon on December 26, 1900. Water lapped softly against the sides of the boat as lighthouse keeper Joseph Moore headed toward Eilean Mòr, a small island off the west coast of Scotland. With him was a small crew of men from the Hesberus. As the boat approached the landing platform, the lighthouse perched on the island’s highest point looked much taller than its seventy-five feet. Built a year earlier in December 1899, the tower was a welcome beacon to sailors as they navigated the treacherous waters around the Flannan Islands. 
     The lighthouse was a circular, three-tiered structure with an attached L-shaped keeper’s house. It was topped by the glass-domed room that housed the lamp which had to be tended to each night by one of the three lighthouse keepers stationed on the island. 
     The keepers of the Eilean Mòr worked in shifts. Three men were stationed at the lighthouse at all times, while a fourth took a two week leave. The island was totally uninhabited, so having three men stationed there was as much to stave off loneliness as it was to make sure the lighthouse beacon was always tended to. If one man took ill or had an accident, two could easily do the job until the man who was on leave returned. The isle had no boat of its own, but the lighthouse was visible from a neighboring island. If there was a problem, flares could be set off and a boat would be sent over to assist.
     The three lighthouse keepers stationed on the island were James Ducat, 43; Thomas Marshall, 28; and Donald McArthur, 40. Ducat was the Principal Keeper; Marshall, the Second Assistant; and McArthur was given the title of Occasional Keeper, as he was taking over for the regular First Assistant who was on extended sick leave.    
     As Moore approached the landing dock, he was already aware that things weren’t as they should be on the island. On December 15, the captain of a steamer who was passing through the area noticed that the lighthouse’s lamp was dark. He sent a wireless to the Cosmopolitan Line Steamers headquarters and reported the outage, but they failed to send a ship to see if the keepers needed any assistance. To further add to the confusion, the man responsible for checking on Eilean Mòr’s light from the Isle of Lewis, an island about thirty-five miles away, failed to notice that the light was out. 
The light was fueled by paraffin, and it wasn’t unheard of to receive a bad batch that wouldn’t light. If that was the case, the Hesperus had extra lamp fuel onboard that should hold them over until a full shipment could be delivered. 
     The captain of the Hesperus had blown the ship’s horn to alert the keepers of their arrival. When the men didn’t appear on the landing, flares were sent up to alert them, but there was still no response. Moore was sent over to see if the lighthouse keepers needed assistance, and to send back the man he would be relieving. 
     As Moore tied the boat up to the dock, he became more and more apprehensive. It was customary for the three men stationed there to greet the returning keeper, but the dock’s flagstaff was bare and the landing was deserted. Also absent were the supply containers that were always left on the dock to be replenished when the relief keeper arrived. 
     The island was eerily quiet as Moore climbed the 150-foot stairway that hugged the edge of the cliff. A strong wind rustled the short brown grasses that covered the southeastern slope, and seagulls cried mournfully overhead. Later, Moore would tell the captain that an overwhelming sense of foreboding came over him on his long walk to the top of the cliff. 
     Although the day was sunny, and the temperatures rather warm for that time of year, Moore felt a chill go through him as the tower grew nearer. He stopped and looked up at the lantern room perched at the top of the tower. No one stirred behind its tall glass walls. 
     As he approached the keeper’s house, he called out. But apart from the sound of the wind buffeting the lighthouse, and the cries of the gulls overhead, all was silent. He made his way to the entrance gate, and found that it was closed. Passing through the gate, Moore tried the entrance door that led to the kitchen. It too was closed, but unlocked. He put his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and went in.
     Moore walked through the entrance hall and immediately noticed that two of the three oil skinned coats were missing. The remaining coat belonged to Donald McArthur. This waterproof garment was the last layer of clothing the men would put on before heading out of doors. Perhaps no one answered the ship’s horn because two of the men were tending to something on the other side of the island, and the third was inside and hadn’t heard the call. Moore opened the door that led to the kitchen, then closed it behind him. Ahead of him was the kitchen door, which was open. The room beyond was deserted.
     On a cold, isolated island, warmth is both a necessity and a creature comfort, so the frigid interior of the keeper house was the first indication that something was terribly wrong. In the short time that Moore had been working on the island, he had never known a winter day when there wasn’t a fire burning brightly in the kitchen fireplace. But there was no fire today, and the ashes were cold to the touch which meant that the fireplace hadn’t been lit for some days. Moore pulled his coat closer around him and looked around the room. 
     The kitchen was unnaturally quiet, and it took him a few seconds to realize why. The pendulum clock that hung on the far wall that normally marked the time with a sensible, steady click was now still. The clock needed winding daily, so it must have run down. 
“Hello,” he called out. “Jim, Tommy, Don?” But there was no reply.
     Wind whistled softly through the chinks in the windows, and the boards on the exterior of the keeper house crackled and creaked. The kitchen was neat and clean. The pots and pans had been cleaned and the kitchen tidied up, which showed that the man who had been acting as cook had completed his work. But where was everyone?
     Moore walked through the kitchen and checked the other rooms in succession. They were deserted as well. All of the beds were empty, and they looked the way the men would have left them in the Mòrning. Passing through these rooms, Moore entered the lighthouse and starred up the spiral staircase that wound its way along the interior wall of the tower. Far above, he could see sun streaming through the tall glass walls of the lantern room; but like the keeper's house, the lighthouse was as quiet as a tomb.
    Moore didn’t take time to search the tower because he knew that something serious had occurred. He darted out of the house, then ran down to the landing where he informed Mr. McCormack that the place was deserted. McCormack, Moore, and a group of men went up to the keeper’s house to search a second time, but they found no further clues as to the lighthouse keepers’ whereabouts.
    The only place that hadn’t been searched was the lantern room, and one can only imagine that they were prepared for the worst. Wind echoed softly in the tower’s cold stone interior as McCormack and Moore ascended the iron steps that wound about the tower walls. When the two men reached the top, they breathed a sigh of relief. The room was deserted. The lamp had been cleaned, and the fountain was full of paraffin oil. The blinds were on the windows and in their proper places, and nothing was disturbed or missing from the room.
    Head keeper Ducat’s logbook was found in the sleeping quarters. The last written entry was on December 13. Details about December 14 and 15 were found written on a slate. These included the time that the light was extinguished on December 15, as well as barometric, temperature, and wind readings as they were recorded at 9 AM that day. This means that the three men vanished sometime between 9 AM and midnight on the 15th.  

     When the Hesperus’ crew searched the island, they discovered that the east landing was untouched, but the west landing had suffered severe storm damage. A box located at 110 ft above the shoreline was broken and its contents lay scattered on the cliff below. The winds must have been nearly tornado-force, as the iron railings were bent over, and sections of the iron railway used to carry large kegs of paraffin and other supplies from the dock to the top of the cliff had been wrenched out of the concrete. In addition, a rock weighing more than a ton was found dislodged from its original position and lying on the railway tracks. On top of the cliff, the grass had been ripped away as far as 33 feet from the cliff’s edge. 
     As night was swiftly approaching, Moore and another man were left on the island to tend to the lighthouse and keep the light burning. The Hesperus would return to the mainland while three replacement keepers could be found. This would mean leaving just two men to tend to the lighthouse; Moore, and one of the crewmen from the Hesperus, A. Lamont. 
     Superintendent of the Northern Lighthouse Board, Robert Muirhead, was clearly worried about Moore’s mental state. In his report, he wrote, “I may state that, as Moore was naturally very much upset by the unfortunate occurrence, and appeared very nervous, I left seaman A. Lamont on the Island to go to the lightroom and keep him company when on watch for a week or two. If this nervousness does not leave Moore, he will require to be transferred, but I am reluctant to recommend this, as I would desire to have at least one man who knows the work of the Station.”
    Moore was definitely shaken by the events. Remember, the three missing men were his friends. He had spent months on the island with them as his only companions, so it’s no wonder the mysterious tragedy affected him so strongly. In addition, he must have considered that the only thing that saved him from a similar fate was his two week shore leave. 

     The following morning, Moore told Lamont that he thought he heard men’s voices calling in the night. Although it was probably just his troubled imagination, one can’t wonder if the voices he heard were the ghostly cries of his missing comrades. The voices stayed silent after that night, and Moore and his companion had no trouble for the rest of their stay on the island. 
Superintendent Muirhead closed the case with his final report saying: 
     “When the accident occurred, Ducat was wearing sea boots and a waterproof, and Marshall sea boots and oilskins; and as Moore assures me that the men only wore those articles when going down to the landings, they must have intended, when they left the station, either to go down to the landing or the proximity of it.
     After a careful examination of the place, the railings, ropes etc and weighing all the evidence which I could secure, I am of opinion that the most likely explanation of the disappearance of the men is that they had all gone down on the afternoon of Saturday, 15 December to the proximity of the West landing, to secure the box with the mooring ropes, etc and that an unexpectedly large roller had come up on the Island, and a large body of water going up higher than where they were and coming down upon them had swept them away with resistless force.”
     This seems like a logical conclusion. There was a violent storm, and Ducat and Marshall grabbed their oil skinned coats and raced down to the landing to secure the box to prevent it from being washed away. Because one man was supposed to be left at the lighthouse at all times, McArthur was left behind. As a newcomer to the island, he would be less familiar with the way the box was secured, so leaving him behind made the most sense.
McArthur must have heard the men calling for help, and in a panic rushed out without his coat to help them. By the time he reached the area where the box was kept, the men were gone, having been taken out to sea by a tremendous wave. A second wave then hit and carried McArthur away.
    But not everyone at the Northern Lighthouse Board agreed. Why had none of the bodies washed ashore? Why had one of the men left without his coat in the middle of the frigid Outer Hebrides winter? And how could three experienced seamen all be taken unawares by an approaching wave?
    At first glance, Muirhead’s conclusion does make sense; but there are problems with his theory, the biggest being weather. There were no reports of storms or giant waves on December 15 anywhere near the Eilean Mòr.

There was some speculation that the men might have been swept away on December 20, the day that a terrific gale caused a considerable amount of damage all over Scotland, and even wrecked part of the Shetland fishing fleet. But from all accounts, the lighthouse went dark on December 15 when the weather was calm, and it remained that way until the Hesperus dropped Moore and his crew off on December 26. 
     This timeline is extremely important, because if the storm hit the island five days after the lighthouse went dark, then it had nothing at all to do with the men’s disappearance. If the Hesperus had arrived prior to the storm, Moore would have found a perfectly intact island. There would have been no bent railings, and no turf torn away from the top of the cliff. Nor would there have been a one-ton boulder lying on the railway path, and no damaged box of rope. The landscape would have looked as it always had–windswept, beautiful, and serene–and the investigation of the missing three men would certainly have been looked at in an entirely different light. 
     Although Muirhead ultimately blamed a huge wave for the lighthouse keepers’ deaths, the majority of his report talks about damage done to the west landing by a violent storm; one strong enough to bend steel railings and dislodge a one ton stone. So which was it? A wave that inexplicably rose up in good weather and washed the men away? Or a wave caused by a huge storm that caused a considerable amount of damage to the west landing?
Just for the sake of argument, let’s say a freak storm that only affected the Flannan Islands was to blame for the men’s disappearance. All three lighthouse keepers were experienced seamen. If a storm did suddenly hit the island, they certainly wouldn’t have risked their lives by rushing out into it just to protect a box of mooring rope. They knew that the supply ship was due in five days, so there would have been no reason for them to do this.  
     Since there was no storm on December 15, we’re left with an odd scenario. Ducat and Marshall go down to the west landing to secure a box of rope in calm weather. They are suddenly taken unawares by a huge wave and washed out to sea. For some reason, McArthur runs out without his coat in a panic in an attempt to rescue them. It’s a complete mystery how he could have known that the men needed help since they were working below the level of the cliff, which meant that they couldn’t be seen from the lighthouse. Nor could McArthur have heard their cries for help since they were too far away. Nonetheless, in this scenario McArthur rushes down the railway tracks, when suddenly another tremendous wave rises up and sweeps him away. 
     This simply doesn’t add up. These were experienced seamen, and they had been on the island for nearly a year. They were well aware of wave activity both on the ocean and around the island. A wave big enough to rise up well over 110 feet from sea level would have been clearly visible to them from where they were working long before it reached them. What’s more, waves that size would have also been detected on the mainland, but none were reported on December 15, or any other day. 
     What about the bodies that were never recovered? Studies have shown that a dead body can remain intact in ocean water for up to three weeks. Though bodies rise and fall to the surface due to decomposition gasses, they generally remain on the surface for several days. It is very uncommon for a person to drown close to the shoreline, and their body never to be washed ashore. And it goes without saying that it’s almost impossible to have three bodies drown together, and not one is ever washed ashore. 
     Some think that the men somehow drowned, and that their bodies were blown out to sea by strong winds. But Muirhead’s report stated that on the 15th, the wind was blowing toward the shore rather than out to sea. Since the wind was blowing toward the shore, the men’s bodies would have been washed ashore rather than taken out to sea. The strong storm on December 20 might have dislodged the bodies from the shore or from the cliff. But even then, at least one body should have washed back onto the shore at some point. 
     Since 1900, many theories have come and gone, most fueled by false information that over the years has become accepted as fact. For example, you will usually read that Moore entered the lighthouse and found an overturned chair, and uneaten food on the table, as if the three men leapt up suddenly in the middle of a meal and rushed out of the lighthouse. But Moore stated in his report that he found the kitchen to be neat and clean. 
So where did this other version of the event come from? From a poem called Flannan Isle about the lighthouse keeper’s disappearance that was published in 1912. The poem was written by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, and one stanza reads:  

Yet, as we crowded through the door
We only saw a table, spread
For dinner, meat and cheese and bread; 
But, all untouched; and no one there:
As though, when they sat down to eat,
Ere they could even taste, 
Alarm had come; and they in haste
Had risen and left the bread and meat:
For at the table-head a chair 
Lay tumbled on the floor.

    Another piece of totally false information that continues to be circulated is that there were mysterious entries in the light house logbook. The entries written in Thomas Marshall’s handwriting supposedly read: 

December 12 -  Gale north by northwest. Sea lashed to fury. Never seen such a storm. Waves very high. Tearing at lighthouse. Everything shipshape. James Ducat irritable (Later that same day) Storm still raging, wind steady. Stormbound. Cannot go out. Ship passing sounding foghorn. Could see lights of cabins. Ducat quiet. Donald McArthur crying.
December 13 - Storm continued through night. Wind shifted west by north. Ducat quiet. McArthur praying. (Later that same day) Noon, grey daylight. Me, Ducat and McArthur prayed.

December 14 -  No entry
December 15 - 1pm. Storm ended, sea calm. God is over all

    The truth is, these log entries are totally fictional. They first showed up in print in 1965 in a book by Vincent Gaddis called Invisible Horizons. In it, he said that he got the log text from a 1929 piece by Ernest Fallon in True Strange Stories. But that piece also proved to be a work of fiction. For the record, the real logbook went missing during the 1901 inquiry into the mens’ disappearance. 
     When we put this false information aside, and if we consider Muirhead’s theory about the missing men being washed away by huge waves as being improbable, we’re left with the very real possibility that foul play may have played a hand in the mystery of the missing lighthouse keepers. 
There’s an often overlooked section of Muirhead’s report that seems to suggest that one or more of the men were planning something. In his report Muirhead wrote:
     “I may explain that signals are shown from Flannan Islands by displaying balls or discs on each side of the Tower on poles projecting out from the Lighthouse balcony; the signals being differentiated by one or more discs being shown on the different sides of the Tower. 
     When at Flannan Islands so lately as 7th December last, I had a conversation with the late Mr Ducat regarding the signals, and he stated that he wished it would be necessary to hoist one of the signals, just to ascertain how soon it would be seen ashore and how soon it would be acted upon.” 
     Muirhead considered Ducat’s suggestion, but after discussing it with other officials he considered it to be impractical, as the view of the island from the mainland was sometimes obscured by fog. He also didn’t want the keepers’ families worried by a distress signal that might not be seen until long after it was posted.  
      So, just eight days before the men’s disappearance, Ducat asked for permission to test how long it would take someone to reach the island if a distress signal was hoisted up onto the tower. This seems extremely odd, and more than a little suspicious given the eventual turn of events. 
Could Ducat have been planning on killing the other two lighthouse keepers, then sending up a distress signal to make it look as if the men had died in an accident? When Muirhead shot down the idea of using signals on the tower, did he kill the men and bury them somewhere on the island? This would explain why the bodies never washed up on the shore.
     One problem with any theory involving murder is that there wasn’t a boat on the island that anyone could escape in. At least, none that anyone knew of. But it’s possible that one could have been bought from a passing ship and secured somewhere out of sight.
    There are those that believe that all three men staged their own disappearance, and that they had an accomplice who picked them up in a boat. Ducat and McArthur both had families, but we don't know what their home lives were like or if they had financial troubles. Could the three of them simply have left the island and made their way for the mainland, then started a new life somewhere else? It’s certainly possible. We hear modern day stories of this very thing happening all the time. 

     Some believe that insanity may have played a part in the men’s disappearance. In the nineteenth century, lighthouse keepers suffered a unusually high frequency of madness and suicide compared to other professions. It was long assumed that they went mad from solitude, but new research suggests that they were literally being poisoned by the lighthouse itself. 
     In order for the powerful light to show on all sides of the tower, it was necessary for it to rotate smoothly and at a consistent speed. This was accomplished by floating the light on a circular track filled with liquid mercury. When dust and dirt built up in the mercury, the lighthouse keepers would strain it through a fine cloth. So like hatters of the day, lighthouse keepers were probably being driven mad by constant exposure to mercury fumes. 
     Everyone assumes that McArthur was the last one out of the lighthouse because his coat was left behind. But what if he went mad and ran out without his coat, and the other two men grabbed theirs and ran after him? Maybe they knew of his mental state, and they were trying to prevent him from killing himself. Perhaps, in their effort to save him from jumping off one of the cliffs all three men went over. Or, maybe McArthur killed both of them, then leapt to his death. 
     The truth is, we simply don’t know what happened to the lighthouse keepers that day, and we probably never will. But whether it was a gigantic wave that swallowed the three men into the sea, a murderous plot, or an act of madness, one thing is for certain; the disappearance of the Eilean Mor lighthouse keepers remains one of the most baffling unsolved mysteries of the Twentieth Century. 
     Because so much lore and superstition surrounds the lighthouse keepers’ disappearance, writers and filmmakers have adapted the story in many different ways. The 2018 movie “The Vanishing” used it as a setting for murder and greed, and various writers have put their own spin on the mystery.
     Whenever anyone vanishes without a trace our imaginations begin to run wild. It’s human nature to want to solve a mystery, if for no other reason than to make sure that such a thing doesn’t happen again. But for a writer, a mystery presents a challenge; to come up with a unique solution to the problem. So to end this journey I’ll leave you with my own twisted tale about the disappearance of the Eilean Mor Lighthouse keepers. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before This Dreamless Sleep  by Barry Pirro

     “Do you think he knows?” Marshall whispered, “Could he have overheard us?” 
     “You know as well as I do,” Ducat said, “the man’s a lummox. He don’t know a thing. And we never talk about it when he’s nearby. He’s as dumb as a blind babe he is.”
     “But he’s not,” Marshall said. “He’s not stupid. You know what he is! You know what he did. And to get away with it for this long; starting a new life with a wife and kids. I’m telling you, he’s shrewd. He’ll be on to us, I know he will.”
     Ducat gazed into the fire. “Keep your voice down. I know what the man did,” Ducat said softly, “and I know what he is. He’s a monster, he is. We both read the journal, and I remember it in the papers like it was yesterday. No one’s safe with the likes of him around. No man, and certainly no woman. Which is why we have to do it today.” 
     “Why don’t we report him to the authorities?” Marshal said. “Let them take care of him.”
     “I’m the authority on this island,” Ducat said, slamming his fist on the table. “I’m the authority. Get that through your skull. There’ll be no trial where he might get off. No chance he might escape. This ends now.”
     “All the same,” Marshall said, “I think we should wait. Moore will be here in five days. That’s just not enough time.“
     “Enough time?” Ducat said with a dark laugh. “Enough time for what? It don’t take more than ‘Donnie, come and have a little look-see over here’ to get the job done. It’s not like the man can fly, you know. The five days before Moore gets back is more than enough time to let nature take care of what’ll be left of the sod. Between the gulls, the fish, the crabs, and the tides, you won’t be able to tell Donnie from a dead seal.”
     “But that’s the problem,” Marshall said, “How do we explain it if we don’t haul him up afterward?”
     “If Muirhead had let me put signals on the lighthouse to let the folks on the mainland think there was a problem, we’d do that,” Ducat said. “But without that as our cover we have to do it different, that’s all. Its’ better this way anyway. The less left of the bastard the better. When Moore gets here we just say Donnie went missing, and that we searched and searched for him. By the time they find him, it’ll look like he fell off the cliff by accident. That’ll be that and the world will be a safer place, believe you me.”
     They heard the outer door of the keeper’s house open then shut, and Marshall went over to the fireplace and pretended to tend the fire. McArthur came in, his hair tousled and wet with mist, and his eyes red and watering from the wind.
    “Damn it’s cold,” he said, coming into the kitchen still wearing his oilskin. “Hey Tommy, put some more coal on the fire. The wind’s whippin up a fury out there and I’m chilled to the bone.”

     “Did you get that box tied up?” Ducat asked. “I don’t want it bustin’ up against the rocks.”
     “I tried, but the wind’s too strong for me to do it alone,” McArther said. “I’m gonna need one of you to help me with it. We should get it done right away. You said yourself a gale is on its way. There’s no knowing how bad it’ll be.”
     Marshall turned slightly and eyed Ducat as McArther made his way to the fireplace. Ducat rose from his chair. “I guess it’ll have to be me helpin’ you out, Donnie-boy. Tom’s got to get the light ready. Dark’s comin’ on fast.”
     McArthur turned around slowly. “The name is Donald, Mr. Ducat. Donald. Not ‘Donnie-boy’.”
     “Oh, excuse me. Well, Donald it is then,” said Ducat with a slight smile. “Tommy, you stay here while I go and help Mr. Donald McArthur tend to that box. Or, would you rather I call you Mr. Marshall?” he added with a laugh. “Be back in two shakes.”
    The two men left the kitchen and closed the door behind them. Before heading outside Ducat grabbed his oilskin from the hook near the front door, then he and McArthur headed out into the fading afternoon toward the west landing. As the two made their way across the field, a storm far out to sea sent tendrils of lightning dancing on the ocean’s horizon, as if bright spidery hands were caressing the edges of the earth. 

     Back at the lighthouse, Marshall paced the kitchen nervously. Wind battered against the keeper's house. The boards on the siding creaked, and the wind moaned overhead in the lamp room. The clock on the far wall ticked steadily, and seemed to grow louder as the minutes passed.
     After ten minutes Marshall finally heard the back door open, then shut with a bang. There was the sound of a coat being removed and hung up on the peg near the door, then the kitchen door opened. 
     Marshall looked up and started to say, “Is it done?” but stopped in mid sentence as McArthur walked into the room, brushing his fingers through his damp hair.
     “God it’s cold out there,” he said. “Better get your gear on. Ducat wants you to help him down by the landing. We tried to get the box off the crane, but it’s stuck and he thinks you’d do a better job at it. Or in his own words, ‘McArthur, you’re about as useful as a tits on a bull. Send Marshall out here.’”
     McArthur laughed and moved over to the stove and put the kettle on. “You’d better get moving. He’s in a foul mood. I’ll make a pot of tea for the three of us. It’ll be ready when you get back. You shouldn’t be long.” 
     Marshall headed toward the hallway door. ‘Ducat must have lost his nerve,’ he thought. ‘Or maybe he has a new plan. I just wish this was over.’ He headed down the hallway and grabbed his oilskin off the hook. 
     “Go and get the light ready,” Marshall said. “If we’re not back soon, start it up. The last thing we need is for the light to go out with a gale heading our way.” He opened the door, headed out into the darkening afternoon, then pulled the door shut behind him.
     McArthur counted to ten, then headed for the back door. He put his oilskin on. He’d be needing it with the wind starting to blow as it was. He opened the door, grabbed the length of pipe used to prop it open in the summer months, then headed out into the fading light, all the while whistling the tune of an old sea shanty.
     When he got back fifteen minutes later, he was soaked to the skin. Both men now lay at the bottom of the cliff. Ducat had put up a fight, but in the end he lost his footing and went over so fast he didn’t have time to scream. Marshall was no problem at all. The wind was blowing so strong that he never heard McArthur coming up behind him. He later reflected on how satisfying the sound of the pipe hitting Tommy’s skull was. ‘Just like a ripe melon hitting a stone floor,’ he thought. 
     McArthur climbed to the top of the tower and started the light, then set it in motion for all the world to see. He tidied up the kitchen, then went into the sleeping quarters and made up Ducat and Marshall’s beds. The wind was loud. A superstitious man might have been frightened alone on the island on a night like this, but not McArthur. He calmly sat on the edge of his bed, took out his journal, and began a new entry. 
     December 14, 1900 -  I wondered how Ducat and Marshall would react when they read about my adventures. I left this book out for them to see, as if I had forgotten to tuck it under my pillow. There was always a chance they wouldn’t read it, but we all know human nature, and how curiosity killed the cat. I hope they also enjoyed the newspaper clippings. Every time I read them, it brings back fond memories. 
     This island is a long way from London, and twelve years is a very long time. Though these two weren’t pretty like my five young Whitechaple lassies, playing cat and mouse with the boys was such fun! Listening in at windows and seeing their glances at one another day after day; it was all I could do to keep a straight face. 
     Now Jack’s a happy boy again! My knife's so nice and sharp, I want to get to work first thing in the morning. But first I’ll have a shave and a change of clothes – the priestly disguise I’d stashed away for when I reach the mainland. I’ll put fuel in the light, and hang my oilskin coat on its peg to keep everyone guessing, then I’ll take my two keepers for a little ride in the rowboat I’d hidden on the far side of the island. The old fishermen that passed by on the trawler helped with that. Money talks, you know. And the same gentleman who sold me the boat will pick me up this afternoon. Poor man. It’s a pity he won’t live long enough to see me off. It’s a good thing I know how to pilot a trawler. 
     Tomorrow, Ducat and Marshall will sit quiet as two dead church mice, and I’ll row and row until the lighthouse is just a speck in the distance, then I’ll spend a pleasant morning feeding the fishies with their stinking innards. I know the papers will never give me credit for these two, but I don’t mind. After all, a Ripper by any other name is still The Ripper.
     McArthur put down his pen and stored his journal in his bag. He climbed into bed, pulled the covers over him, then turned out the light. He had a smile on his face, and not a care in the world. The last thought he had before his dreamless sleep began was, ‘My god, It’s good to be back!’

Resources
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/The-Eilean-Mòr-Lighthouse-Mystery/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannan_Isles_Lighthouse
https://acclaimhealth.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Reading-Flannan-Isles-Lighthouse.pdf
https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/historical-strangeness/tag/Joseph+Moore+eilean+Mòr
https://historyandimagination.com/tag/joseph-moore/
https://theghostinmymachine.com/2019/06/17/unresolved-what-happened-to-the-lighthouse-keepers-of-eilean-Mòr-flannan-isles-scotland-disappearance/
https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/curious-disappearance-eilean-Mòr-lighthouse-keepers-scottish-mystery-004820
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70180/115-year-old-mystery-flannan-lighthouses-missing-keepers
https://www.nlb.org.uk/history/flannan-isles/ 
https://www.ozy.com/true-and-stories/unraveling-the-mystery-of-eilean-Mòr-lighthouse/90050/
http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2014/03/mad-as-a-lighthouse-keeper-not-the-solitude-but-the-mercury/ 


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The Sodder Children Disappearance

1/9/2022

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     The story you are about to hear is true, and although it has nothing to do with ghosts or the supernatural, it is nonetheless terrifying. The Sodder children's disappearance is one of the most talked about unsolved mysteries of the 20th century; and because it all started on Christmas Eve and involved children, it is all the more heartbreaking. The case gives new meaning to the phrase ‘disappeared without a trace’, so if you are up to the task, maybe you will be the first to put this 75-year-old cold case to rest once and for all. 
     Christmas Eve of 1945 was a special one for the nation. World War II was finally over, and families would at long last get to celebrate the holidays with loved ones who were coming home from overseas. 
     The Sodder family wished that their 21-year-old son Joe would have been able to make it home in time for Christmas, but once he was given leave, it was just a matter of time before he would be reunited with his parents and his nine brothers and sisters. 
     There would be no Christmas tree that year for the Sodder family because they were sad that Joe wouldn’t be with them for the holidays. But they had plans to keep the family traditions of exchanging gifts, attending church, and a special Christmas dinner was in the works.      
     Christmas was always a special time for George and Jennie Sodder. Celebrating the holidays with family made them grateful for how far they had come in their lives. George Sodder had worked hard all his life to make a name for himself. Now the 50-year-old Italian immigrant was a well respected, successful businessman and owner of his own trucking company. 
     Giorgio Soddu--George’s given name--immigrated to the United States from Tula, Sardinia, Italy in 1908 when he was just 13-years-old. But in spite of his youth and the prejudices many people felt toward Italian Americans, he worked hard to make a name for himself in his new country.
     George lived with relatives in Pennsylvania, attended school, and eventually found work in the railroads carrying water and other supplies to the workers. A few years later he took a job as a truck driver in Smithers, West Virginia, and eventually started his own trucking company. Soon after, he met his wife-to-be, Jennie Cipriani, a storekeeper’s daughter, and the couple moved to Fayetteville, West Virginia where they raised their family of ten beautiful children.
     With nine children at home, Christmas Eve of 1945 was a busy time for the Sodder family. That night, 17-year-old Marian, came home from her dime store job with surprise gifts for her three younger sisters, and they wasted no time in opening their early Christmas presents. 
     By 10 PM, George Sodder had retired to his bedroom on the first floor. His two oldest sons, John, 23, and George Jr., 16, were already asleep in the second floor bedroom that they shared with their two younger brothers who were still playing in the living room.     
     It was after 10 PM, and Jennie tried to usher the children up to bed, but they asked if they could stay up a little later to continue playing with the toys. Jennie reluctantly agreed, but she reminded Maurice, 14, and Louis, 9, that they still needed to feed the chickens and bring the cows into the barn. They promised their mother that they would, and that they would also put their sisters Martha, 12, Jennie, 8, and Betty, 5, to bed after they finished playing. They also promised to turn out the lights, shut the curtains, and lock the front door. 
     Jennie headed to bed with three-year-old Sylvia in her arms, leaving the kids playing in the living room next to their older sister Marion who had fallen asleep on the couch. The children played quietly, so as not to waken their sister, and one can imagine that they were talking about the Christmas presents that they would be opening the next morning. 
     They looked at the mantle clock. ‘It’s getting late’, they probably thought, ‘but we’ll head up to bed in a little while. Just a little more time playing with the toys won’t hurt. After all, it’s Christmas Eve.’    
     At 12:30 AM, the phone rang and Jennie rushed from the couple’s first floor bedroom to the hallway to answer it. ‘Who would be calling this time of night?’ she thought. She picked up the phone and heard laughter and the clinking of glasses in the background as if a party was going on. A woman asked for a name that Jennie was not familiar with, so she told the woman that she had the wrong number. Jennie later recalled that the woman laughed in a strange way when she told her this, and that she then hung up. 
     Jennie hung up the phone. She thought that the call was rather odd, but chalked it up to someone at a Christmas Eve party who misdialed the phone. She glanced down the hall and was surprised to see that the lights were still on in the living room, and that the shades had not been drawn. The boys were usually very responsible about locking the house up at night, but Jennie guessed that with all of the excitement about Christmas they had forgotten. With the exception of Marion, all of the kids slept upstairs, so she assumed that they had all gone up to bed. 
     Careful not to wake Marion who was still asleep on the couch, Jennie closed the curtains, turned off the lights, and checked the front door. It was unlocked. They had also forgotten to lock the door. Those kids. They must be so excited about Christmas. She clicked the lock shut, took one last look around the room, then went back to bed being careful not to wake up her husband, or baby Sylvia who slept in a cradle next to their bed. 
     At 1 AM, Jennie was awoken by the sound of something hitting the roof of the house with a loud bang followed by a rolling noise. Having already been woken a half-hour earlier by the mysterious phone call, Jennie was tired. She listened for a short time, but didn’t hear any other sounds, and she quickly fell back to sleep. A half-hour later she was awoken by the smell of smoke and got out of bed to investigate. She rushed down the hall and was shocked to find George’s home office engulfed in flames. 
     Jennie ran back to the bedroom and woke George up, then the couple shouted up the stairs for everyone to get out of the house quickly. Thick, black smoke filled the halls, and flames covered the stairway that led to the children’s bedrooms. John and George Jr. fled the upstairs bedroom they shared with their brothers, singeing their hair on the way out. 
     During the mayhem, one of the family members tried to call the fire department, but the phone wasn’t working. The line was dead.  
     The family fled the house and stood on the front lawn in their pajamas, shivering in the freezing cold, watching their house burn down. But something was wrong. The five children who had stayed up late to play with their toys were not with the rest of the family. 
    “Didn’t you wake your brothers up when you left your bedroom?” George asked John. “I did,” he said, running his hands nervously through his singed hair. “At least, I called out to them and the girls to get up, then Georgie and I ran out of the room. I thought they heard me and that they were right behind us when we ran out. Isn’t that right Georgie?” 
     George Jr. tried to think back, but the past few minutes were a nightmare. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know. Everything happened so fast, and there was so much smoke. We were both coughing and yelling for everyone to get up. The smoke was so thick I couldn’t see a thing. If the light wasn’t on downstairs we never would have been able to see where to go.”
     The family ran around the yard frantically calling for the kids, but they were nowhere to be found. Then they looked back at the house. The entire bottom floor was now engulfed in flames and an icy cold wind fanned the flames. The kids must be trapped in the upstairs bedrooms. 
     George and the boys raced back to the house. They tried to go in through the front door, but the flames had spread so quickly that they blocked the way. All George could think of were his five children trapped in the house with no way out.      
     George and his sons searched for a way back into the house, but it seemed hopeless. At one point, George climbed a wall and broke a side window with his fist, badly cutting his arm. But it was no use. The fire was raging inside the house, and the flames leapt out at him. The only way left to save the children was to attempt to rescue them through an upper window. 
     George raced around to the side of the house where the ladder always stood, but when he turned the corner he was shocked to find that it was gone. He was beginning to panic, but he had to find a way to save his children. He hit upon the idea to move one of his trucks up to the side of the house, and to climb on top of it to reach the second floor window. Luckily, he always kept the keys in the trucks, so he still had a chance to rescue the kids. 
     Ignoring the freezing cold, George and his sons ran barefoot across the frozen yard to the trucks. George got behind the wheel of one of them and turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. The engine was dead. ‘How could this be?’ he thought. ‘It started just fine yesterday.’ Leaping from the truck, he ran over to the second truck where John was behind the wheel frantically trying to start it, but that truck was also dead. 
     George and the boys tore back to the house and looked up at the upper floor. Smoke was beginning to seep out around the corners of the upper windows. They ran to a rain barrel that was next to the house hoping to douse the flames with water, but it was frozen solid. Back on the front lawn, the family stood huddled together in the icy wind, calling out the children’s names, hoping against hope that the kids would hear them and be able to jump out of one of the upstairs windows. 
     While George and the boys were busy trying to start the trucks, daughter Marion sprinted to a neighbor’s house. She told them about the fire, and asked that they call the Fayetteville Fire Department. The neighbor picked up the phone, but she was unable to reach an operator. 
     A driver on a nearby road saw the flames and tried calling the fire department from a nearby tavern, but he too was unable to reach an operator. It was Christmas eve, and the local switchboard must have been understaffed. 
     Exasperated, the neighbor drove into town and finally located fire chief F.J. Morris. In those days, Fayetteville didn’t have a siren to call firefighters to action. Instead, they used a “phone tree” system whereby one firefighter phoned another, who in turn phoned another. But even though the fire chief knew that five children were trapped in the house, he didn’t jump in his car and head over to the Sodder’s to see how he could help or call anyone to make sure the family was safe. He just started the phone chain and waited for the men to arrive. 
     Back at the Sodder home the family stood huddled together on the lawn on that frigid Christmas morning wearing just their pajamas. They watched helplessly as their home burned to the ground with the five little children trapped inside. Less than an hour after the fire started, the roof collapsed, the house was reduced to a smoldering pile of ashes and burnt timbers, and the five youngest children were surely dead.
     Even though the fire department was only two and a half miles away, the fire crew didn’t arrive at the Sodder home until 8 AM, over six hours after the fire started. Later, fire chief Morris would tell the state police that he didn’t know how to drive the fire truck, so he had to wait at the firehouse until the firemen arrived. In addition, since it was Christmas eve, many of the firefighters were away so they were sorely understaffed that night. By the time the fire crew arrived, the only thing they could do was hose down the remains of the house to cool down the ashes. There was basically nothing left of the house itself. 
     A short time later, local and state police showed up on the scene. They interviewed the family members, sifted through the ashes, and conducted a cursory investigation. By now the house was just a pile of wet cinders, and nothing remained but some burnt timbers, the remains of some home appliances, bits of the tin roof, and the smoldering basement.     
     By 10 AM fire chief Morris had some news for the family, but it wasn’t what they expected to hear. The firemen had sifted through the ashes, but they hadn’t found any bones, as might have been expected if the children had died in the fire. “But the children had undoubtedly perished in the blaze,” Morris said. “The fire had burned so hot that it must have completely cremated their remains.” 
     George and Jennie looked at the fire chief dumbfounded. “No trace of the children?” they asked. “The fire burned for less than an hour, and there were five kids. Surely there must be at least some bones left after the fire.” But Morris wouldn’t discuss it further. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’ve seen cases like this before. I know it’s hard, but you’re just going to have to accept that the fire cremated their remains.” 
     Morticians arrived on the scene and the Sodders were told that because no traces of the children’s bodies had been found, the easiest and most respectful way to hold the funerals would be for the parents to pick up a handful of ashes for each of the five children, place the ashes in a box, and bury the ashes in place of the bodies. But George refused this suggestion. He was simply too grief stricken to make such a decision so soon after the tragedy.  
     Morris told George Sodder to leave the site undisturbed so that the state fire marshal’s office could conduct a more thorough investigation at a later date; but after four days, George and Jennie decided that they could not bear the sight of the charred ground that was once their home. George bulldozed five feet of dirt over the site, filling in what remained of the basement with the intention of turning the space into a memorial garden for his dead children.
     The day after the fire, the local Justice of the Peace, who also served as acting coroner, and six local citizens met in the Fayetteville town town hall to hold an inquest into the fire. They came to the quick conclusion that the fire was caused by faulty wiring, and that there was no sign of arson. They ignored Jennie Sodder’s report of hearing something hitting the roof a half hour before the fire started.
     The five children had undoubtedly perished in the fire, they said. The house was in complete ruins, and their bedrooms on the second floor had collapsed into the basement along with the rest of the house. There was no way that anyone could have survived such a devastating fire.  
     Death certificates for the five children were issued on December 30, 1945, and a funeral was held three days later. George and Jennie were so grief stricken that they couldn't bring themselves to attend the funeral, but the surviving children did.
     After the funeral, the Sodders began to have doubts about the official findings for the house fire and the fate of their children. They wanted an in-depth investigation to thoroughly explain how, among other things, faulty wiring could have caused the fire when the lights they turned on as they were trying to leave the house were working perfectly during the fire. Also, why wasn’t the phone working when it worked just a half hour before the fire started? Jennie was still convinced that the sound she heard on the roof that night had something to do with the fire. 
     When we think of arson, we have to think of a motive. It turned out that over the previous few years, George had been threatened on more than one occasion. The Sodders now began to wonder if their children had been kidnapped, and if the fire was a cover-up. After all, no one actually saw the children while the house was burning. When the two older boys ran out of their dark, smoke-filled bedroom, they called out to their younger brothers to get out of the room, but they never actually saw them. The three girls were supposedly asleep in the room together at the top of the stairs. There wasn’t a door at the top of the staircase, so they should have had no problem hearing the family shouting for everyone to get out of the house. And thinking back, there were no screams coming from the house as it burned, nor was there the smell of burning flesh.
     Evidence began to surface that supported the couple’s suspicions. The ladder that George always kept against the house that had gone missing the night of the fire was found at the bottom of an embankment 75 feet away from the house. Who had thrown it there, and why?
     The Sodders thought back to the night of the fire, and how the telephone hadn’t worked when they tried calling the fire department. It had worked perfectly just an hour before the fire when Jennie received the wrong number call. The fire chief had told them that the phone didn’t work because the wires probably burned.
     At the Sodder’s request, a telephone repairman went to the scene of the fire. He told the Sodders that the house’s telephone line hadn’t been burnt in the fire, it had been cut. Even though the house was now gone, the 14-foot telephone pole that was some distance from the house hadn’t been touched by the fire. In order to cut the phone wires, someone had to have climbed the 14-foot tall pole, reached out two feet away, and cut the wires. This discovery was strange to say the least, but things were about to get much, much stranger. 
     The night of the fire, as the family were watching their house burn to the ground, one of the neighbors reported seeing a man stealing a block and tackle from the Sodder’s property. The man was identified, arrested, and fined. He also admitted not only to the theft--he also confessed that he had been the one who cut the phone line, thinking it was a power line. Despite these confessions, he adamantly denied having any connection to the fire. Why were the local police so quick to believe him, and why wasn’t he investigated further?
     Why this man would have wanted to cut the power lines to the Sodder house just to  steal a block and tackle has never been explained. It’s doubtful that anyone would risk electrocution by climbing a 14 foot pole to cut the power to the house just to steal a relatively inexpensive piece of equipment. But perhaps there was a more sinister explanation for why he cut the power to the house. Jennie said that if the power line had been cut that night, they wouldn’t have been able to turn on the lights to find their way out, and the entire family would have been killed in the fire.
     Could this same man have tampered with the Sodder’s trucks the night of the fire? They had both started perfectly the day before. George believed that the trucks had been tampered with, but it’s also possible that George and John had simply flooded the engine in their haste to start the trucks.
     What about the mysterious phone call that Jennie received that night? The police were actually able to locate and interview the woman who made the phone call. It turned out that she was a local woman at a party, and that the call was simply a misdialed number. At least, that’s what the police said. 
     The thing that the Sodders had the most trouble believing was that all traces of their children’s bodies would have completely burned in the fire. The day after the fire, the couple went back to the ruins of the house and found many household appliances in the rubble, as well as fragments of the tin roof. How could these items have survived, but not the children’s bones.
     Household appliances are not human bodies. Is it possible that the fire really was hot enough to incinerate the children’s bodies, but not hot enough to destroy the appliances? Jennie did some research and found a newspaper account of a similar house fire that had killed a family of seven. In that case, the house had burned for a similar amount of time as the Sodder house, but skeletal remains of all seven of the victims were found at the scene. If this is so, then why were there absolutely no remains of the Sodder children?
     Jennie began conducting experiments on burning small piles of various animal bones in a wood stove. Even after burning the bones for well over 45 minutes, they were never completely cremated. There were always large bone fragments. In some cases, full bones were found after the fire cooled.
     Knowing that her experiments weren’t very scientific, Jennie consulted an employee at a local crematorium. He told her that during a cremation, pieces of human bones and teeth typically remain even after burning at 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours. This is far longer and far hotter than the Sodder house fire could possibly have burned, so where were the children’s bones? 
     How many bones are we talking about? The human body is made up of 206 bones. The total number of bones for the five children would be 1,030. It would be virtually impossible for not one bone, or even one tooth to be found in the rubble. 
     What about the fire itself? Had it been set deliberately, and if so, why? After the fire, George recalled two incidents that made him believe that arson was to blame.
     In October 1945, a visiting life insurance salesman became incensed after George declined his services. He was also insulted by remarks George had made against Mussolini. Like George, the man was an Italian immigrant, and he supported Mussolini. As he stormed away, he warned George, “You’ll see. Your house will go up in smoke, and your children will be destroyed.” 
     At first glance, this story might be dismissed as just an odd coincidence. But months after the fire, the Sodders hired a private investigator named C.C. Tinsley who discovered that this same insurance salesman was one of the jurors for the coroner’s inquest that ruled the fire an accident. What are the odds that of all the town residents that could have been considered to be on the panel, the man who threatened George and his family was chosen. And remember, the panel came to the quick conclusion that arson was not the cause of the house fire. It’s possible that this man was able to sway the jury into dismissing the fire as arson. 
     Earlier that same year, a man approached George looking for odd jobs around the family farm. At one point during the interview, he walked around to the back of the house and warned George that a pair of fuse boxes located there would “cause a fire someday.” George was puzzled by these remarks. The house had recently been re-wired, and the local electric company inspected the job and pronounced it safe. Unfortunately, George was unable to recall this man’s name.
     The older Sodder boys recalled seeing something strange in the weeks before Christmas that year. They said that they noticed a strange car parked along the main highway, and that its occupants were watching the younger Sodder children very carefully as they walked home from school. The boys said that they never got out of the car, but they seemed overly interested in the children as they watched them walking down the road.
In the 1940s, the coal industry was under constant pressure from the mafia. George had a successful coal-trucking company in Fayetteville, and there were rumors that the mafia had tried to recruit George, but he declined. Some believed that members of the Sicilian mafia had kidnapped the five children, then started the fire in an attempt to extort money from George. 
     Jennie had always insisted that she was awoken by the sound of something hitting the roof just a half-hour before the fire broke out. Could the sound she heard have been some kind of incendiary device thrown at the house? In their search for answers, the Sodders located a local bus driver who had passed through Fayetteville late on the night of the fire. He said that he had seen people throwing “balls of fire” at the house.
A few months later, when the snow had melted, a small, dark green, rubber ball-like object was found in the brush near the site of the house. Upon examining it, George concluded that it was a napalm “pineapple bomb”. Someone could have coated or injected rubber balls with a flammable substance and thrown the burning balls at the house. Perhaps that is what the bus driver saw that night? And maybe that’s the sound that Jennie heard on the roof. 
     There are a few things to consider about Jennie’s story. First, she was awoken by the sound of something hitting the roof, then rolling off. Jennie and George slept on the first floor. Why didn’t any of the children report hearing the sound? They were on the second floor. They could have been asleep, but somehow the sound was loud enough to wake Jennie. Could the sound instead have come from John or George Jr. dropping something in their bedroom?
     The bigger question, though, is that if people were indeed throwing balls of fire at the house, then why was the fire discovered in George’s first floor home office? If the fire didn’t start on the roof, then the only logical explanation is that when throwing the flaming objects at the roof didn’t work, someone came up the house, broke a window, and tossed one into George’s office. 
     The private investigator, C.C. Tinsley, turned up an unusual piece of evidence that seems to point to some sort of a cover-up. After 60 years, several versions of the story are floating around, but one is that fire chief Morris did find remains at the site of the fire--a human heart--but he didn’t tell the Sodders.
     Tinsley and George confronted Morris about it and he admitted that he had found remains after the fire. But here’s where things get a little fuzzy. According to reports, After finding the remains, Morris took the heart, hid it in a metal dynamite box, and buried it at the scene. 
     When confronted, he apparently led George and the investigator to where it was buried. They dug up the box and brought the heart to a funeral director. He examined the “heart” and concluded that it was actually beef liver, and that it was untouched by the fire.
     Later, the Sodders heard rumors that the fire chief had told others that he had buried the beef liver in the rubble in the hope that finding the remains would placate the family and stop the investigation.
     It’s hard to know what to make of this story. The Sodders didn’t call for a more thorough investigation until long after George covered the site with soil. So, if Morris wanted to stop the Sodder’s investigation, he wouldn’t have been able to put the “heart” in the ashes. 
     But even if Morris had put the liver at the site earlier, why did he immediately take it away and bury it in a box where no one would find it? If he changed his mind about the cover-up, why didn’t he just throw the liver into the woods, or take it with him and dispose of it somewhere else? If he admitted to George and the investigator that he buried the liver at the site, and that he did it to stop an investigation of the fire, then why didn’t the state or local police investigate the incident? Once again we are left with many questions and few answers.
     In August 1949, George persuaded Oscar Hunter, a pathologist from Washington D.C., to supervise a new search at the site of the Sodder house. A team of investigators excavated through the five feet dirt that George had put on the site, and they sifted through the dirt and ashes. The search was very thorough, and several artifacts were uncovered. These included a dictionary that had belonged to the children, some coins, and several small bone fragments. It was determined that the bones were human vertebrae. Could this be the evidence that everyone had been waiting for?
     The bone fragments were sent to the Smithsonian Institute where they were examined by a specialist named Marshall T. Newman. He confirmed that the bones were from a human lumbar vertebrae. He further concluded that all of the bones were from the same individual. In his report, Newman wrote “Since the transverse recesses are fused, the age of this individual at death should have been 16 or 17 years. The top limit of age would be about 22, since the centra, which normally fuse at 23, were found to be unfused.”
     Newman said that given the fact that the oldest of the missing children was only 14-years-old at the time, the bones couldn’t be from any of the five missing children. He also added that the bones showed no sign of exposure to flame. He went on to say that he agreed that it was “very strange” that those should be the only bones found at the site. In his opinion, a wood fire that had burned for such a short time should have left full skeletons behind, if not flesh.
     The report concluded that the vertebrae had probably been in the soil that George Sodder had used to cover the site. How the bones ended up in the soil is another mystery. The bone fragments were returned to the Sodders in September 1949. 

Sightings of the Missing Children
     But what about the missing children? After the fire, witnesses began to come forward. One woman who had been watching the fire from the road said that she had seen a few of the kids looking out of a car that drove by while the house was still burning. Not knowing who this witness is, we have no way of knowing if she actually knew the children, and if she would have recognized their faces. In addition, anyone would slow down to look at a house on fire, and if there were children in the car, they too would have peered out the window to see what was going on. Still, one has to ask, what family would be driving around at 2 or 3 AM with children in the car?
     A woman who worked at a rest stop between Fayetteville and Charleston also contacted the Sodders. She said that she’d served the children breakfast the next morning, and that she noticed a car with Florida license plates in the parking lot while they were there. 
     If the rest stop was about half-way between Fayetteville and Charleston, the drive would have taken roughly a half hour. If the children left the house before Jennie answered the phone, it would have been sometime between 11 PM and midnight. If someone kidnapped the kids and ushered them out of the house, it’s possible that they had first taken them to a local house. Perhaps they had a change of clothes for the kids, all of whom would have left the house in their pajamas. After ordering them to change, they could have put them in the car and made their way towards Charleston, stopping along the way at the rest stop.
     But I find this scenario highly unlikely. Kidnappers would never have taken the five children out in public. If anything, they would have kept them completely hidden. Remember, the two oldest missing children were 14 and 12. Children that age might attempt to get someone’s attention. Bringing five children into a busy rest stop to have what must have been a long breakfast would be the last thing a kidnapper would do.
     In 1952, the Sodders put up a billboard at the site of the house, and another along US Route 60 near Ansted, West Virginia. The billboard showed pictures of the missing children along with the caption: “What was their fate? Kidnapped--Murdered--Or are they still alive? $5000 Reward”. The reward was later raised to $10,000.
     After the billboard went up, tips began to trickle in. A St. Louis woman contacted the family saying that Martha, the oldest missing girl, was in a convent there. A patron in a bar in Texas gave the tip that she had overheard an incriminating conversation about a Christmas Eve fire in West Virginia. Someone in Florida claimed the children were staying with a distant relative of Jennie’s. In that case, the relatives were investigated and had to prove that the children were actually their own. George traveled the country to investigate every lead, but he always came home empty handed.
     A woman named Ida Crutchfield who ran a hotel in Charleston saw the billboard and contacted the Sodders. She claimed that she had seen the children about a week after the fire. She said that they came into the hotel sometime after midnight accompanied by two men and two women. She described the adults as appearing to be “of Italian extraction.” When she attempted to speak with the children, one of the men gave her a hostile look and began talking rapidly in Italian, silencing the whole group. She also said that they left early the next morning.
     What’s interesting about this story is the woman specified that the individuals seemed to be Italian. She had no way of knowing the Sodder’s Italian heritage, or the incident where the Italian salesman threatened George for insulting Mussalini. But as with every other tip, this one was a dead end. 
     The most credible and mysterious information the Sodders ever received came years later. In 1967, a letter came in the mail addressed to Jennie. It was postmarked from Central City, Kentucky. It had no return address. Inside the envelope was a photo of a young man, around 30-years-old. His features strongly resembled those of Louis Sodder, who would have been around that age at the time. On the back was the following text:

Louis Sodder
I love brother Frankie
IilI boys
A90132 or 3

     The meaning of the writing on the back of the mysterious photo has never been deciphered. Recently, the granddaughter of one of the surviving Sodder children said that her mother always told her that the writing said “Aged 32 or 3” not “A90132 or 3”. She said that the writing was in script, and that the 9 was actually a letter ‘g’ and the ‘0’ was the ‘e’, and the ‘1’ was the ‘d’. The message “I love brother Frankie” remains a mystery.  
Picture
     A side-by-side comparison of the man in the photo, and of nine-year-old Louis does show an eerie resemblance. Louis and the young man in the photo even have the same raised left eyebrow. The man in the photo also bears a striking resemblance to the oldest boy who went missing, 14-year-old Maurice. Siblings often resemble each other when they get older, so it’s very possible that Louis would have grown up to resemble his older brother. 
     The Sodders hired a private detective to investigate the strange photo, but he never reported back to them and they were unable to locate him afterwards. In reading the account of this lead, and of the missing private detective, I wonder why they didn’t pursue the lead further with another detective. The family were so convinced that the photo was genuine that they added it to the billboard, and they displayed a copy of the photo in their home. 
     The Sodder’s never stopped searching for their lost children. Geroge even went so far as to contact the FBI for help in investigating what he considered to be a kidnapping. Then director J. Edgar Hoover personally responded to George’s letters. He wrote, "Although I would like to be of service, the matter related appears to be of local character and does not come within the investigative jurisdiction of this bureau." He added that if the local authorities requested the bureau's assistance, he would of course direct agents to assist, but the Fayetteville police and fire departments declined to do so. Was there a reason why they refused to cooperate with the FBI? We’ll never know.
     George died in 1969, but Jennie, George Jr., Joe, Marion, and Sylvia continued the search for the missing kids. John never talked about the fire, and thought that his family should just move on with their lives.
     Jennie continued to live in the family home, wearing black in mourning and tending the memorial garden at the site of the fire until her death in1989. After Jennie’s death, the family finally took down the weathered billboards that had stood for 37 years.
     As the years went on, the surviving children passed away. Today 77-year-old Syliva Sodder is the only one left. To this day she remains convinced that her siblings did not die in the fire.
     With no trace of human remains found at the scene, as painful as it would be for the family to accept, is it possible that the five Sodder children actually did die in the fire?
     After the fire, the family members were interviewed by the State Police. John first told them that when the family was fleeing the house, he went in and shook his brothers and sisters to wake them up before running out of the room. He later changed his story and said that he just called out to them, then left the room thinking they heard him. 
     The family said that John told them that he told the police that he tried to shake them because he felt that’s what he should have done. They said that he felt guilty about NOT shaking them awake, and that he just called to them. This could be true, but it could also be true that he did exactly what he first said he did.
     If John did shake them awake, there are a few extremely important things to consider. First, it means that he was the last to see the children alive. Second, it means that the five children actually did die in the fire. And third, it means that for over 50 years, John had been lying--not only to his family, but to the world.
     But would he really continue to lie all of those years just to cover up his guilt at not having tried harder to wake his siblings up? He never wanted to talk about the fire, but would he actually watch his family search for his missing brothers and sisters for over fifty years when he knew that they were dead? We’ll never know. If there was a confession to make, John took it to his grave.  
     Modern day fire professionals believe that the five children probably died of smoke inhalation, and that they were either dead or unconscious when the rest of the family were roused. It’s not uncommon for some people to die of smoke inhalation who are right next to other people who survive. This could explain why John and George Jr. survived the fire, but their younger brothers and sisters might not have. 
     What about the fact that no one reported the smell of burning flesh during the fire? From all reports, it was a very windy night. As a result, no one would have been able to stand downwind from the fire. Smoke and sparks would have been flying in the direction of the wind, so it’s not surprising that no one smelled anything unusual. 
     What about the lack of human remains in the ashes? The cremation specialist told the Sodders that bones remain even after burning for two hours in 2000 temperatures. The Sodder house was only on fire for 45 minutes. Why weren’t there any remains if the fire burned for such a short time? In reality, the home was probably burning for much longer than 45 minutes. Although there were active flames for 45 minutes, the fire would have continued to burn underneath the debris and ashes. The fire department showed up 5 ½ hours after the fire started. They put water on the site to cool it down so they could sift through the ashes, but the fire itself was smoldering up until that point. 
     With the bodies burning in fire for that long, very little would have remained. And it’s important to remember that the fire department sifted through the ashes for a very short time. It may not be that there weren’t any remains, they just might have missed them. 
     What about the investigation that was done in 1949? Those were professional investigators, and they didn’t find any of the children’s bones either. Keep in mind that four years prior to the investigation, George had piled up to 5 feet of soil onto the site against the wishes of the fire chief. Although the investigation was considered to have been very thorough by 1949 standards, by today’s standards it was far from it. Today, an excavation and investigation by a large team of researchers would take months to complete, not just a few days. 
     In spite of evidence to support the theory that the children died in the fire, there is equal evidence supporting the theory that they were kidnapped, possibly by the Sicilian mafia. And some modern day fire experts and cremation workers insist that not only should there have been some bones after the fire, there should have been a lot of bones and teeth left over, even if the fire had burned all night as some have suggested. As a result, the Sodder Children disappearance continues to be one of the most baffling and talked about unsolved mysteries of all time. 
     George Sodder died in 1969. If anyone thinks that he didn’t actually believe that his children were still alive, they need to take a look at his tombstone. On it is carved, “In Memory of George Sodder who believed in justice for everyone, but was denied justice by the law when his five children were kidnapped Christmas Eve 1945 at Fayetteville, W. VA.”

Resources
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-children-who-went-up-in-smoke-172429802/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodder_children_disappearance
https://thetruecrimefiles.com/sodder-children-disappearance/
https://mywvhome.com/forties/sodder.html
https://museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk/object/animal-liver/
https://sorcerer.blog/2017/05/22/the-age-of-black-magic-step-ten/
https://medium.com/the-true-crime-times/the-sodder-family-a-christmas-inferno-f39f60843412
http://sites.rootsweb.com/~wvrcbiog/WhatReallyHappenedToChildrena.html
https://defrostingcoldcases.com/case-month-sodder-children/
reddit.com/r/UnresolvedMysteries/comments/cpvxde/the_sodder_children_new_leads/
http://truecrimediscussions.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-missing-sodder-children.html
https://sites.psu.edu/resorensenpassion/
https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/the-sodder-family-this-is-important-medical-condition-causes-spine-fusing-early.326967/
https://www.timeswv.com/news/their-fate-kidnapped-murdered-or-are-they-still-alive/article_be5920fe-a3f1-11e6-a3fc-43908d62effb.html
https://scarestreet.com/sodder-children/
https://www.websleuths.com/forums/threads/wv-sodder-family-5-children-christmas-eve-1945-2.35000/page-3
https://stacyhorn.com/2005/12/28/long-long-long-sodder-post/

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