Category Archives: Tales

Ghost Critters of Texas

September 25, 2024 Nick McDonald Leave a comment

Shortly before we put the podcast on ‘indefinite hiatus’, one of the show ideas we were discussing was ghost animals, especially once one of us came across a tale of a ghost cow–after all, who doesn’t want to know about a ghost cow?

The ghost cow, unfortunately, wasn’t a huge story on its own, but since it came out of Texas, it lent itself to a collection of stories about Texas and its numerous ghostly animals.

Ghost Cows of Farm Road 511

Farm Road 511 sits at nine-and-a-quarter miles long and runs along the northeast edge of Brownsville, in Cameron County. During the day, it serves as a normal if not fairly busy farm-to-market access road, but the locals will warn travelers to avoid it at night, as the local spirits like to cause trouble for unsuspecting drivers.

Certain dark and desolate stretches of the road are known to provide drivers, particularly the unwary, with a sudden encounter with ghost cattle–and when we say sudden, we mean ‘in-the-middle-of-the-road, appearing-feet-from-the-bumper, jerk-the-wheel-to-avoid-a-collision’ sudden. Many drivers have spun the wheel to avoid suddenly crashing into the spectral cattle, often flying off the road and wrecking their vehicle regardless. Accident or no, when the travelers check their mirrors or get out of the car, no evidence exists that any cattle has been there, living or dead.

As the ghost cows have a tendency to cause vehicular accidents, they come with a steady danger of property damage, injury, or even death, making them one of the more dangerous of all of Texas’s ghost animals.

Image by Thanks for your recognition • Donations ♡ welcome from Pixabay

Brush Arbor Ghost Turkey

This one barely seems worth mentioning, but in the interest of completeness we have the tale of a supposed phantom turkey near Elkhart.

A particular area of unsettled land covered in thick trees there is known to the locals simply as the Brush Arbor. Many ghost stories are attached to the Brush Arbor, in no small part thanks to an unfortunately now-deceased but once extraordinarily active local storyteller by the name of James “Toodler” Rials. Ol’ Toodler liked to tell of a doctor that lived and worked in the countryside surrounding Elkhart at the turn of the 19th century known as John Harper Paxton. Paxton would often pass the Brush Arbor as he crisscrossed the county, and reportedly saw former, long dead patients of his on multiple occasions dwelling in the Brush Arbor, looking longingly at him as though they were awaiting one last diagnosis–perhaps a second opinion on their apparently vacant mortality.

The Brush Arbor itself is primarily habitat for smaller mammals: squirrels, racoons, possums and the like. Whitetail deer might pass through on occasion but were scarce. The area could have once been a great home for black bear and wild turkey, but they were hunted out of the area sometime before the 20th century.

So, when Toodler’s own uncle, Redger Daniels, went hunting there in his youth sometime in the 1930’s, a chill ran down his spine when he heard the call of a tom turkey calling through the thick hardwood forest. Even more suspicious was that the gobbling was followed by a tinkling noise, like several small bells.

Sure, an unidentified turkey call in dense woods may seem a silly thing to frighten a person, but maybe Redger’s subconscious knew something his forebrain didn’t pick up on. Between Dr. Paxton’s deceased patients and Redgers’ exceptionally rare game, is it possible something more sinister waits in the Brush Arbor, trying to lure people in?

Image by LUIS ALFREDO RODRIGUEZ AGUAS from Pixabay

Ghost Monkey Bridge

At the intersection of Wilson and West College Streets, a trail lies beaten into the brush behind a roadblock where once West College Street changed into Farm Road 1500. Where the decomposing road meets the nearby railroad tracks, the remnants of an old bridge known to the locals as “Monkey Bridge” slowly disintegrates.

Tales tell that sometime in Athens’s past, a circus train was passing through town when some of the cars derailed and a car containing show monkeys broke open and its primate occupants escaped captivity. Most tales say they fled to the nearby trees; some tales say they took bloody revenge on their owners first. Perhaps the wildest tales are that they were recaptured by a local preacher, Reverend Fuller, and took him to his nearby parcel which he called Fuller Park, where he kept some on display in a cage and others he conducted horrible experiments on in the pentagram arranged tunnels beneath the park. (That last tale may have gotten jazzed up by local urban legend tellers a bit more than the others.)

Despite the wildest of accusations, the area around the bridge has the kind of mystique that local teens looking to prove their courage gravitate towards, often at the defiance of warnings from wiser and more experienced adults. Reports of phantom screams, both man and monkey, have been reported coming from the imperceptibly thick brush around the area. One resident even has a story of visiting the bridge at night only to be chased away by a violent man in a monkey mask.

Whatever the case, the Monkey Bridge is the kind of place that local youth both fear but can’t help to be fascinated by.

Image by Wolfgang R. Zissler from Pixabay

Santa Anna’s Ghostly Guard Dogs

The Texas Revolution began in 1835, as American settlers in Texas refused to pay taxes and tariffs to the ruling Mexican government, claiming that Mexico was doing nothing for these people living on its far northern frontier. President Antonio López de Santa Anna repealed the constitution, and to put the rebellious Texans back under control gathered a large army by supplementing his own forces with hired convicts, derelicts, and a large number of natives (the latter of whom didn’t really understand Spanish commands).

Despite some bloody victories at The Alamo and Goliad, Santa Anna’s army stretched beyond their supplies, expertise, and capability to the breaking point. In the end, the smaller and less experienced Texian Army and Navy got the upper hand, and Santa Anna himself was captured the day after his defeat at the Battle of San Jacinto despite disguising himself as a lowly dragoon. After an attempted suicide, Santa Anna was cared for by Texian Army surgeon James Aeneas Phelps, and it was agreed to move El Presidente’s imprisonment to Phelps’s plantation in Brazoria County.

Supposedly, a Mexican officer gathered a rescue party with the intention of riding to Phelps’s plantation, Orozimbo, and rescuing their captured leader. The group waited until just before dawn, when most of the plantation was asleep. But when they started to make their approach, the frantic braying of hounds abruptly broke the morning silence, rousing the guards and scaring off the would-be rescuers. This might be a fairly mundane incident were it not for the fact that there were no kept dogs in the area, not at Orozimbo or for many miles away.

One servant claimed to have spied the three animals–two with shaggy coats and one hairless, and all ghostly white–and claimed that they had wild, frightening eyes. The animals matched the description of three dogs that belonged to a who had been killed at Goliad, that reportedly refused to eat or come inside after their master left for battle. One day they just disappeared, not to be seen again until the incident at Orozimbo.

From then on, they would be spotted occasionally in the forests near Orozimbo, but never again was their barking heard. As recently as 1974 a couple saw them near the cemetery and ancient oak tree that serve as the last remnants of Orozimbo. Some say that they remain as ever watchful eyes to the area, just as they were when Santa Anna was imprisoned there.

The Ghost Horse of the Llano Estacado

If you think about the symbols of American freedom, an entire library of images may come to mind, but perhaps the most stoic and reserved still lies with a herd of wild horses galloping across the American plains. Reintroduced to the Americas by European settlers and explorers, it was only a matter of time before a steady trickle of escaped horses found their way into the wild and began to reclaim the land of their ancestors. Today there’s about 72,000 wild horses running across publicly protected lands in the United States, but this is the story of one very special one.

The legend of the Ghost Horse started sometime in the second half of the 1800’s, with legends of a huge mustang the color of pale cream or white snow and ran with such grace that he appeared to glide rather than work his legs. He was known by many names: the White Steed of the Prairies, the Pacing White Stallion, the Ghost Horse of the Plains, the White Shadow, the Winged Steed, and Wind Drinker

Ranchers, horse racers, vaqueros, and all manner of horse handlers knew that Wind Drinker would be a magnificent prize, both as a specimen and as breeding stock, but despite an assortment of tricks and traps, the great horse would always just simply glide away at gale pace. Native trackers were hired to help capture the beast, but upon viewing it they deemed it possessing “unspeakable medicine” and abandoned the project.

Perhaps the most well-known tale of the Wind Drinker’s attempted capture comes from before the American Civil War, and involves a couple of fellows from outside Texas: a fiddle-player from out east named Kentuck and an Arkansas gambler named Jake. Hearing the tales of the ghost horse the two started seeing dollar signs in their eyes and quickly gathered four strong distance horses, some pack mules, and enough supplies to last them half a year in the wilderness. Jake was particularly dedicated to being the man who would tame the animal. “I don’t know exactly where to hunt,” he supposedly said, “but we’ll ride on the prairies until we find the horse or until they are burned crisp by the fires of Judgement Day.”

It took them weeks to arrive at Liano Estacado in the Texas panhandle, and as the weeks turned to months without sightings, Kentuck’s resolve wavered. Jake would often chide Kentuck until he quit complaining, but in the end Jake was right. One rainy evening as the duo sat trying to warm themselves around a buffalo chip fire, they glimpsed the great white horse. At first, Kentuck thought it was Indians when Jake signaled him to look and made for his mount, but them he saw it. “My eyes picked up the white horse,” Kentuck later said. “He stood there to the southwest, maybe a hundred yards off, head lifted, facing us, as motionless as a statue. In the white moonlight, his proportions were all that the tales had given him. He did not move until Jake moved toward him.”

The horse fled, and Jake and Kentuck gave chase. The white beast again seemed to glide across the landscape, and the duo could never manage to close the distance on him–they would ride harder and the mustang would easily match their speed. Foreboding eventually creeped down Kentuck’s spine, and he yelled out at Jake, “There’s no sense to it. I’m remembering things we’ve both heard. Let’s stop. We can’t no more catch up to him than with our own shadows.”

But Jake had come so close after so much work, he refused to slide backwards in his quest. He yelled back, “I told you I’m going to follow till the Day of Judgement!”

Kentuck continued the pursuit, though perhaps not as furiously as his partner, allowing himself to drift back a bit. The world grew silent, the sound of hoofbeats the only noise either of them could hear. As the beast and its pursuers raged on, Kentuck saw a cliff lying in front of them, and felt relief as he was sure the chase would finally end. But that relief quickly got swallowed by terror as he realized neither the Ghost Horse nor Jake was slowing down any.

“Jake, watch out for the canyon!” he yelled, but it was too late, and Jake and his mount flew off the edge and into the dark emptiness of the Palo Duro Canyon.

Reaching the edge, Kentuck was unable to see the bottom, and somehow in the confusion had lost sight of the Ghost Horse as well, his attention solely on his partner’s impending doom. He waited until the light of dawn, when he could find a game trail that led him to the bottom of the canyon, where he found the remains of Jake and the horse he rode into Judgement Day. Kentuck buried them both in a makeshift grave.

Today, campers and hikers in Palo Duro Canyon still report hearing the thunder of hoofbeats on occasion and have even reported seeing a ghostly white horse running the nearby plains and canyon’s edge. A handful of times witnesses have even seen a ghostly cowboy riding in hot pursuit, doomed to chase a beast that it appears he will never catch.

Featured image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

Tales

Napoleon’s Little Red Man of Destiny

September 18, 2024 Nick McDonald Leave a comment

Napoleon Bonaparte: emperor, general, conqueror. At his height, France and therefore Napoleon controlled most of Western and Central Europe, as well as a colonial jewel box from the tip of South America to Indonesia second only to the British. Today, he’s largely remembered for two things: being short and being the first great example of why you don’t want to invade Russia in winter. The former is largely a misunderstanding: at 5’6”, Bonaparte was average height for a late 18th-century Frenchman, but tended to surround himself with taller generals, giving the appearance that he was shorter than the common man. The latter is a classic tale of hubris–Napoleon bet his profound gift for logistics and strategy against the resolute Russian army and their brutal climates, and lost. Unfortunately, this was all against the counsel of one of Napoleon’s greatest advisors: an ethereal dwarf known as ‘The Little Red Man of Destiny”.

Though possessing a rational mind hungry for planning and logistics, Bonaparte was also fascinated with the esoteric and otherworldly. He would regularly interpret and analyze his dreams for hidden meaning, and loved to tell ghost stories. He also claimed to be visited and advised many times by The Little Red Man, first appearing to him during the Egyptian Campaign in 1798. The creature offered Napoleon a deal: if he followed the strange man’s orders he would personally find success on the battlefield for the next ten years, and to convince the general the Little Man added that he had previously advised many of France’s greatest leaders.

“You have become far too ambitious,” the red man chided the general. “The French people are becoming wary of your overwhelming lust for power.”

“I have only ever done what was in the best interest of France and not my own, sir,” retorted Napoleon. “And how is it that you know so much of my plans?”

A smile crept across the little man’s face as he said, “I have been by your side since you were a boy. I know you better than you know yourself.”

Les Lutins

Descriptions of The Little Red Man are quite similar to another common figure in French folklore, les lutins. The lutins were said to be similar to British and Scandinavian folklore of house spirits like elves, gnomes, sprites, and hobgoblins. Occasionally they would appear as a saddled horse ready to be ridden, known as Le Cheval Bayard. Lutins are often blamed for tangling human or horse’s hair into knots while they sleep (often called elf-locks or fairy locks).

First appearing in literature between 1176 and 1181 by Benoît de Sainte-Maure as well as Wace, the lutin (also called luitin, nuiton, or netun in some texts) is described as a sea monster. In the early 14th century, “Le Chevalier de La Tour Landry” describes the ‘luitin’ as “a kind of demon, more mischievous than evil, who comes to torment people.” The name likely originates from Latin’s ‘Neptunus’, the Roman god of the seas, which in Late Latin became a catch-all term for all Pagan gods. The transition from netum to nuiton was probably influenced by Old French nuit (‘night’), and by the Old French luitier (‘to fight’).

Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy’s “Le Prince Lutin” in 1697 delved deep into the world of the lutin, describing lutin of the air, earth, and water. In the story, one lutin describes what it is to be one of their own: “You are invisible when you like it; you cross in one moment the vast space of the universe; you rise without having wings; you go through the ground without dying; you penetrate the abysses of the sea without drowning; you enter everywhere, though the windows and the doors are closed; and, when you decide to, you can let yourself be seen in your natural form.”

As the French colonized the New World, the lore of the lutin came with them. In the Americas, though occasionally appearing as a dwarf adorned in red (more on that later), lutin largely shed their humanoid appearance and adopted forms more akin to pets and local animals that would hang around homes and farms. All-white cats in particular were expected to be lutin, but any animal of distinction that was observed to stay close to human domiciles was said to likely be a lutin.

The Little Red Man of Destiny

But what of Napoleon’s Little Red Man and his claims to have influenced French leaders? The first reported encounter was with Catherine de Medici, Queen of France from 1547 to 1559 and mother to three other French Kings. She reportedly came face-to-face with the Red Man during the construction of Tuileries Palace in 1564, described as a gnome-like creature in red clothing. Catherine considered him an uninvited guest, a spirit, and overall a bad omen.

The French Wikipedia entry for Tuileries attributes the Red Man to being the ghost of Jean l’Écorcheur, a butcher that was strangled by order of Catherine de Medici herself. Jean swore to Catherine’s astrologer, Cosme Ruggieri, that he would return and that all of Tuileries inhabitants would suffer grave misfortune.

Catherine and her family indeed lived through one of the French monarchy’s most turbulent times, beset by constant civil and religious war. Italian-born Catherine, raised to be Roman Catholic, was already a sore point to the Protestant French citizenry, and she eventually encouraged her son, King Charles IX, to massacre thousands of Huguenots during St. Batholomew’s Day in 1572, a pre-emptive attack out of fear of retaliation for the supposedly Spanish papal ambush of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny. The rest of Catherine’s life in the monarchy would be punctuated by bloodshed, loss, and heartbreak.

The next sighting of The Red Man would occur in 1610. He was seen by King Henry IV shortly before his assassination at the hands of Catholic zealot and schoolteacher François Ravaillac. Queen Anne d’Autriche ran across the sprite a few days before the Fronde, a series of bloody civil wars beginning in 1648. Chambermaids of King Louis XVI encountered the Red Man in the king’s bed in 1792 while the monarch was on the run, trying to evade revolutionaries. Later that same year, Louis’s wife Marie Antoinette saw the Red Man in the corridors of Tuileries on August 9th, just one day before the revolutionaries would storm the palace and end the monarchy. A few months later guards in La Square du Temple spotted the little man, the same prison in which Louis and Marie awaited their fate. In 1817, Tuileries Palace burned to the ground and with the monarchy eliminated, The Little Red Man moved on to his newest plaything, the man who would be Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Despite Napoleon’s success in Egypt, the Little Man informed him that the fleets were not following their orders, the Egyptian Campaign would stall, and by the time he returned to France he would find her beset on all sides by England, Russia, Turkey, and their European allies. As history shows, the Red Man’s claims all proved to be true.

Despite this setback, Napoleon appeared to remain in contact with the Little Red Man through the rest of his military career. The new government residing in Tuileries was well aware of Bonaparte’s stories of encountering the Red Man and it was claimed he visited him whenever the Emperor stayed in the Palace. A sworn affidavit by Counsellor of State Louis Mathieu Count Molé said that he had heard himself the Little Red Man of Destiny meet Bonaparte shortly after the Battle of Wagram.

Wagram was a hard-fought two-day onslaught against the British and Austrian Fifth Coalition and Napoleon’s own French, German, and Italian Imperials. After the struggle ended on July 6th, 1809, the Red Man appeared again to Napoleon at midnight in his Schönbrunn headquarters. The original ten years already expended, Napoleon begged the man for a five-year extension to his contract. The Little Man agreed, but this time added the caveat that Bonaparte must never launch a campaign in Russia. Of course, we’ve already covered how that went-–it resulted in the biggest defeat of Napoleon’s career, bigger than The Battle of Waterloo.

The Little Red Man’s final appearance was on the morning of January 1, 1814. Counsellor of State Molé was approached by the Red Man, demanding to see the emperor on matters of urgent importance. Napoleon had given strict orders to not be disturbed, but when he heard who was calling he approved the visit immediately. Napoleon begged the man for more time, enough to complete a handful of proposals, but the Red Man balked at his request. Instead, the Little Man told him that he had three months to achieve peace with his enemies, or there would be consequences.

Napoleon ignored the Little Man and instead launched a new eastward campaign that failed miserably, all but delivering France into the hands of the European allies. On April 1st, three months to the day of the Red Man’s warning, the Senate called for Napoleon’s abdication, and he spent the rest of his life in exile on the isle of Saint Helena.

Le Nain Rouge

There is another place with ties to France that has a history of encounters with a little red man, and that is the area around the former French colony of Detroit, Michigan. Detroit has a long-standing tradition of encounters with Le Nain Rouge, literally “the red dwarf”, a small man dressed all in red with a gift for prophecy and a fondness for human suffering. Sound familiar?

Long treated as a bad omen or sign of misfortune, the Nain Rouge first appears in literature in 1883 in Marie Caroline Watson Hamlin’s “Legends of Le Détroit”. She describes the little man as being “very red in the face, with a bright, glistening eye; instead of burning, it froze, instead of possessing depth emitted a cold gleam like the reflection from a polished surface, bewildering and dazzling all who came within its focus.” Charles M. Skinner’s “Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land” in 1886 also mention the Nain Rouge, characterizing him as “a shambling, red-faced creature, with a cold, glittering eye and teeth protruding from a grinning mouth.” Other accounts describe him as having an animal body but a man’s face with “blazing red eyes and rotten teeth” and covered in red and black furs.

While the lutin may originate in French tradition, it appears the Nain Rouge may have as much to do with Native American legends as it does the French. Some Native stories have identified the little red man as the “impish offspring of the Stone God”. French Christian Missionaries in the region that was to later become Detroit reported finding an Idol revered by the local natives, humanoid in appearance and painted red. Natives from the Erie Band referred to it as a Manitou, a Francofied version of the Algonquin word ‘monetoo’, a catch-all word for spirits and spiritual energies. Shortly after discovery by Europeans, they destroyed the idol with an axe that had been blessed by the missionary priests. Unfortunately, this ended up creating the opposite of the desired effect, as the natives declared the area cursed as a response to the colonists’ disrespect.

Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac was reportedly advised by a fortune teller that he must appease the Nain Rouge as part of the founding of Detroit in 1701, but ignored the warning and upon encountering the little man attacked him with his cane and yelled, “Get out of my way, you red imp!” Naturally, Cadillac suffered a string of misfortune afterwards. He was charged with abuse of power in Detroit and removed from his position, reassigned to Louisiana. Eventually he returned to France, where he was imprisoned and stripped of his fortune.

After that, the appearance of the Nain Rouge would portend disaster to European settlers and their kin, particularly in violent encounters with Native Americans. The little man was spotted shortly before the Battle of Bloody Run on July 30, 1763, where the British were killed by Chief Pontiac’s men from the Ottawa Tribe. The Nain Rouge was seen again shortly after the battle, dancing among the corpses on the banks of the Detroit River, which is said to have run red for days afterwards. When Governor William Hull surrendered Detroit in the War of 1812, the Nain Rouge was blamed on a series of misfortunes that put the city in such a position. Portentous Nain Rouge sightings have persisted until at least the 20th century, with reports of the creature coming shortly before the Riots of 1967, and again in 1976 shortly before an ice storm ravaged the area.

Today, Detroit culture has made the Nain Rouge a local icon in its own right. Known as “The Demon of the Strait,” several local drinks are named after him and he has inspired a number of small budget films. Beginning in spring of 2010, Detroit has held an annual parade called the Marche du Nain Rouge, where the citizens “chase” the Nain Rouge out of town, often wearing masks and costumes so the dwarf won’t recognize them, banishing the little man from the city for another year.

So is the Little Red Man of Destiny or the Nain Rouge still out there? The people of Detroit seem to think so, and in fairness the practice of running him out of town every year seems to coincide with the city turning its luck around. Without a French monarchy to harass, he seems to have removed himself from European politics. We may just have to wait for the next disaster to befall the former French empire before we know for sure. In the meantime, the little man in red dress will have to reside in folklore… and old Twin Peaks episodes.

(Disclaimer: David Lynch is not connected to the French monarchy in any way. I checked.)

Tales

The Ghost of Goose River Bridge

September 11, 2024 Nick McDonald Leave a comment

This tale originally appeared in Episode 003 – Salty Bill’s Limp Richard

One of our favorite ghosts here at Booze + Spirits, for reasons that are immediately apparent, is that of William Richardson, sometimes called “The Pitcher Man”…

Richard lived during the American Revolutionary War in Goose Creek, which today is part of Rockport, ME. During the war it was common for all the men of fit and fighting age to get sent off on the front lines, so small outlying communities like Goose River were often left solely to the care of the women, children, infirmed, and elderly. As you might imagine this made these small towns easy targets, and as such Goose River was often hounded by Redcoats looking to break support for the Revolutionaries by harassing locals and raiding homes for supplies.

Interestingly, rather than breaking the locals though, the constant harassment by their agitators instead inspired them to look for ways to cock things up for the annoying Brits wherever they could. (Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, non?) The remaining inhabitants of Goose River would often hide in the tree lines and take pot shots at Redcoat landing parties rowing to shore from their ships. A couple of the older men starting wreaking havoc by sitting just in earshot of the Redcoats, one playing roll call on his drum while the other yelled out military commands, giving the impression of regiments of Patriots nearby just out of sight. But it was the real star of the group, William Richardson, who would go down in local history for his actions.

One evening, American privateer Samuel Tucker had acquired a large shipment of tea from a poorly watched British vessel and as a result soon found himself being pursued by an imperial warship down the Maine coast. Being an avid fisherman and possessed with intimate knowledge of the narrow rocky island passes that dot the area, William Richardson came to Tucker’s aid, helping him navigate the hazardous coastline, and guiding him to a hiding spot near Harpswell.

Harpswell lies in a channel in the middle of Sebascodegan Island, and the Brits were well aware of the dangerous, irregular channels throughout. Knowing that their warship couldn’t pursue Tucker through the treacherous passages, they decided instead to play a waiting game and set up a blockade, waiting for the moment Tucker and Richardson would inevitably have to come back out of hiding and attempt to flee to safety before daylight exposed their position. Tucker was worried, but William Richardson knew these seas and the more importantly the weather well, eventually convincing him they just needed to sit tight until the next storm.

Sure enough, a storm rolled in, and the squall demanded much of the Brits attention. Again, using that intimate knowledge of the local waters, Richardson and Tucker crept their vessels through the rough waters and escaped unseen past the blockade. By the time the Brits realized what had happened, Tucker was long gone and well on his way to the safety of Boston Harbor.

When the war ended in 1783, all of Goose River celebrated, and none more than William Richardson. He threw a large party at his home, but as the last guest departed for the evening, he decided that was no reason to let the party die out. Richard set to grabbing a pitcher, filling it with ale, and began roaming into town, greeting folks in the streets, knocking on doors, and trying to rally some compatriot party-goers.

While crossing the Goose River bridge, Richardson ran across three men and approached them, as he had everyone he encountered that evening, to join in his festivities. Unbeknownst to him, these three were Tories–men still loyal to the British crown, and none too happy about the colonists recent victory. One man clubbed him in the head, and trio left him unconscious on the bridge, where he succumbed to his injury and died before someone else happened to find him.

Ever since then, Goose Creek bridge and its different incarnations and modernizations over the years have been haunted by Richardson, often seen staggering around, pitcher in-hand and looking for more party goers. He is often simply called ‘The Pitcher Man’.

The biggest spat of Pitcher Man sightings comes from the 1950’s, when the area became popular as a ‘Lover’s Lane’ spot for hot and bothered teens to park their car and get frisky where they wouldn’t be noticed by prying eyes. So they were all the more surprised to see a man in Revolutionary-era clothing stumble out of the woods, pitcher in-hand, and tapping on their car window looking for someone to share a drink with him. Reports of The Pitcher Man became such an issue that eventually a sign was posted on the site, reading “no trespassing between sunset and sunrise” (though some more skeptical folks might think it has more to do with the teenage canoodling).

Either way, an American hero and a ghost that never wants to see the party die is definitely a ghost that we here at Booze + Spirits feel is worthy of remembering and celebrating.

Cover photo by Eric Muhr on Unsplash

Image created with Microsoft Copilot Designer

Tales

Owl Women of North America

September 4, 2024 Nick McDonald Leave a comment

Curiously, the tales of human-sized monstrosities melding the features of humans and owls are found far and wide in the folklore of native tribes throughout North America.

The Apache, for instance have tales of ‘Big Owl’, a large, human sized owl that would eat children and transform into an ogre. He appears to have been used largely in a ‘boogeyman’ context, the kind of story meant to keep children from running out of view of watchful adults. The Choctaw told of an owl deity known as Ishkitini, the horned owl, who would hunt grown men and, like the Irish banshee, had a screech that served as a portent of death. The Wabanaki know of Cipelahq, a peculiar and dangerous bird spirit with the head and talons of a large owl while the rest of its body is invisible to the human eye.

But perhaps the most feared of the owl creatures are the subsects that can be collectively called ‘Owl Women’. Owl Women show up in the tales of many tribes, and can always be seen creeping about the outskirts of civilization. The common traits between them consist of being intelligent creatures, practicing dark magic, and a hunger for the flesh of humans.

La Lechuza

La Lechuza is told of mostly by tribes in Northern Mexico, though there is some spillover to some of the western tribes. La Lechuza is a witch than can transform into any animal it chooses, but tends to prefer a large owl or crow. “Lechuza” is often used interchangeably with “bruja”.

While most traditional Mexican legends can be traced to a root source, La Lechuza’s origins are lost in the haze of oral tradition and without a clear origin, as the legend seems to have spread between tribes that were long separated or had little contact with each other. The only thing known for sure is that the tale predates the conquistadors. One source suggests that Mexico largely regards birds of prey as evil, which is why lechuza (literally ‘owl’ in Spanish) takes the form of a bird of prey, but this interpretation seems highly dubious as an eagle devouring a snake is literally the symbol of Mexico.

In human form, lechuza are often seen wearing dresses made of ‘lechuzan’, or owl feathers. As an owl or other animal, they are a vaguely human sized version of the animal, but always with a woman’s head and animal body. As a bird of prey their giant talons are capable of lifting a man or even a moderate-sized car, according to some eyewitnesses. Vocally, they are capable of mimicking a large number of animals, but their own call is typically a series of eerie whistles, typically in threes.

The transformation from woman to beast has some interesting caveats. They may choose to transform their head along with the rest of their body if they wish, but they seem to suffer a diminishment of their powers by doing so, explaining their odd appearance. The lechuzas transformation is also peculiar in that they may change both at and against their will–perhaps an expression of a curse on the unwilling. But most transformations, even the undesired one, have an upside as lechuzas often get paid for their services.

La Lechuza can be either a woman who learns to turn into an owl or vice versa, and according to legend will only change form if paid to, otherwise they lose their power. Some stories claim that Las Lechuzas are the women that were murdered by their lovers and seek revenge. Others say they are just women who delve too deep into dark magics. One of the more popular explanations is that they were women who practiced witchcraft and were found out by the village, who exposed and killed them. These women swore revenge on all those that harmed them and anyone else that stands in their way. Supposedly there is an organized cabal of shapeshifting Lechuza women, so they can potentially hunt in packs if necessary.

Las Lechuzas are thought to feed on humans and will hunt them in the dark or try to lure them out of their homes by making the sounds of something in distress, like a crying baby or a kitten or puppy. Lechuza is thought to control the souls of men and often lead them to their death, though that aspect comes off a little cloudy, as La Lechuza is more about doing the job she is paid for rather than her own moral code. Her reputation for evil is more linked to her unnatural powers and her willingness to take on any task for payment rather than her own desires for revenge or suffering.

Supposedly they only hunt people who have caused harm to women or have evil in their heart, so there is some relief there for the virtuous among us. Regardless of the individual though, seeing la lechuza is never a positive sign, and usually a portent of a coming tragedy. Unfortunately, even the eyewitnesses of la lechuza that were not attacked seldom seem to be long for this world, suffering seemingly unrelated accidents or violence shortly after.

More modern tales tell of La Lechuza involve the old ‘high strangeness’ chestnut of draining the power from a car battery, stranding a potential victim and forcing them to go for help on foot. Traditional tales speak of la lechuza having control over thunder and lightning, so there seem to be some interesting parallels there with control of electricity. Unusual thunderstorm patterns can be a sign that la lechuza is nearby, as well as spotting the shadow of a large bird, or even hearing birds singing at night.

Should you happen to find yourself hunted by la lechuza, the first rule is to never attack them head-on. They can easily overpower a human and are immune to non-magical weapons. Lines of salt will prevent their crossing, as it will most malevolent magics. Never make eye contact, as that is said to be how they gain control over your soul or in some cases learn to take your appearance. Funnily enough, they appear to hate to be sworn at, so the best defense against them is to let your foul mouth fly and it will likely run la lechuza off.

Tah-tah-kle’-ah

Tah-tah-kle’-ah is a species of horrible and powerful owl women monsters talked about by the Yakama tribe form the territory today covering Southern Washington and Northern Oregon. There are many parallels with a creature called sne-nah by the Okanagans, whose territory was in nearby modern British Columbia. The most famous accounts of the tah-tah-kle’-ah come from an account taken by L.V. McWhorter from Yakama tribesman William Charley in 1918.

L.V. McWhorter was an early 20th-century farmer who became interested in the native culture of first the tribes in his native West Virginia and later in the plateau tribes of Washington. He recorded many of their tales and became a vocal advocate for the mistreatment these tribes suffered at the hands of the American government. Though an amateur, his early dedication to recording the native tales long before many other white men cared to has earned his writings a place in the Washington State University special collections.

Unfortunately, my investigation of William Charlie turned up nothing, but the following story is reportedly in his words:

“Before the tribes lived peaceably in this country, before the last creation, there were certain people who ate Indians whenever they could get them. They preferred and hunted children, as better eating.

“These people, the Tah-tah kle’ -ah, were taller and larger than the common human. They ate every bad thing known such as frogs, lizards, snakes, and other things that Indians do not eat. They talked the Indian language, and in that way might fool the Indians. There were five of them, all sisters. But at the last creation they came up only in California. Two were seen there. They were women, tall big, women, who lived in a cave.

“One time the Shastas (Shasta Indians) were digging roots and camped. They knew that the two Tah-tah kle’ -ah were about, were in that place. The Indians were careful, but the Tah-tah kle’-ah caught one little boy, not to eat, but to raise up and live with them. The boy thought he would be killed, but he was not.

“The Tah-tah kle’-ah had him several days. One day, when they were out of sight, the boy hurried away. He ran fast, traveled over rough, wild places, and at last reached his own people.

“After many years the two Tah-tah-kle’-ah were destroyed. None knew how, but perhaps by a higher power. Their cave home became red hot and blew out. The monster-women were never seen again, never more heard of but they have always been talked about as the most dangerous beings on earth.

“One other of the five sisters was drowned. From her eye, all owls were created. The person or power that killed her said to her, ‘From now on, your eye will be the only part of you to act. At night it will go to certain birds, the owls’.

“Owl [Sho-pow’-tan] was the man. He was a big chief who lived at Po-ye-koosen. He went up the Naches [river?] to hunt deer. Many men went with him. They hunted all one sun, and when evening came, Owl did not return to camp. The hunters called to each other, ‘Owl is not here! Owl is away! Owl is lost!’

Tah-tah-kle’-ah, the evil old woman with her basket, heard that call in the twilight, ‘Owl is lost!’ And she said to her four sisters, ‘We must go hunt Owl who is lost from his people. We will get him for ourselves’.

“Owl knew that Tah-tah-kle’-ah was coming for him; so he went up to a hollow place in the Tic-te’ ah. You can see the trail that he traveled up the face of the rock to the cave high up in the wall of Tic-te’ ah. Grass is growing along the narrow trail. You can see it when you are out from the rock where it winds up the cliff.

“Owl had killed a deer. He filled the tripe with the blood of the deer. He heard Tah-tah-kle’-ah coming, and he knew she would kill him. He knew, and he placed the blood-filled tripe in front of him. Tah-tah-kle’-ah entered the mouth of the cave. She looked. It was dark, but she saw it, the strange thing lying there. She did not know. She was afraid. She called to Owl, ‘Take it away! I do not like it!’

“Owl said, ‘No! That is something powerful, step over it.’ Tah-tah-kle’-ah did as told, stepped her foot over the tripe. Owl was ready. He did not get up. He sat there; and when the Tah-tah-kle’-ah stepped, he punched the tripe with his stick. He punched it often and it went, ‘Kloup! kloup! Kloup!’

“Tah-tah-kle’-ah was scared! she screamed, threw up her hands, and fell from the cliff. The wana [river] ran by the base of the cliff, deep and swift. Tah-tah-kle’-ah fell into the water and was killed.”

Stikini

The Stikini is a terrifying vampiric owl-person primarily known to the Seminole people of modern Florida, though there is some overlap with the Creek of modern Oklahoma, and the tale has spread some to swamp inhabiting tribes in New Jersey and Michigan.

Stikini are witches that have transformed themselves into giant undead owl-like monsters. These reanimated dead spend the nights hunting for human hearts to devour, and to hear their cry is to be marked for imminent death. Much like the infamous Skinwalkers among the Navajo tribe, the Seminole rarely speak their name, for fear of attracting their attention.

The stikini are completely indistinguishable from normal humans in the daytime, but at nighttime they vomit up their internal organs, blood, and soul, which is what allows them to transform into great horned owls and go hunting for sleeping humans. As with la lechuza, stikini can transform into any animal they wish, but prefer the visage of a giant owl. They hide their organs and innards up in the treetops to keep animals from eating them as well as away from others who would do them harm.

The stikini removes its victim’s heart through their mouth and returns with it to their lair where they cook it in an enchanted pot. Afterwards they can consume it and absorb their victim’s life force. Before sunrise, they must regather and swallow all their innards to again return to their human guise.

To defeat a stikini, one must first locate its organs. You can try to hide them or keep them from the stikini, as sunlight will destroy them if the sun rises before they have transformed back into human form, but a stikini will be able to sense its organs’ location and you may have vicious life-and-death battle on your hands. The safest method of killing a stikini is said to be to prepare magical arrows, decorated with owl feathers, blessed and dressed with sacred herbs. Then wait near the stikini’s organs and shoot the monster while it is swallowing its organs. This appears to be when it is at its most vulnerable.

Cover photo by Dušan veverkolog on Unsplash

Tales

Wolf Creek Inn

August 28, 2024 Nick McDonald Leave a comment

The Wolf Creek Inn lies in Wolf Creek, OR, just off Interstate 5 on Exit 71. It is a two-story Classic Revival style clapboard inn that serves as a bed and breakfast, restaurant, community event center, and museum. Wolf Creek Inn is the longest still-running inn and restaurant in Oregon history.

The lodge began life as a clap-board lodge built in the early 1850’s offering rest along the Applegate Trail. In 1883 it was converted from a “Six Bit House” into a first-class hotel by orchardist Henry Smith. Pear and apple trees survive to this day near the Inn that were originally planted by Smith. Christened the “Wolf Creek Tavern”, the stagecoach stop was built up with 16 rooms, separate men and women’s parlors, a dining room, and a deluxe outhouse just outside the back door as a respite along the sixteen-day coach route between Portland and San Francisco.

Working cowboys would be allowed to stay in the attic for 10-cents a night, but the attic was unfloored, leaving only a “shelf” of two or three boards around the perimeter of the attic for the cowboys to sleep. To keep from rolling off in their sleep, the cowboys would jam their spurs into the rafters, the marks of which still remain. In 1925, then owners John and Dinky Dougal constructed the South Wing along with the famous “Tasty Cuisine” sign, and the inn grew in popularity as a retreat for writers, artists, and actors.

Famous guests to Wolf Creek Inn include: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Orson Welles, John Wayne, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sinclair Lewis, and President Rutherford B. Hayes. The entire cast of “Gunsmoke” stayed in the inn once while shooting an episode in the nearby ghost town of Golden. Clarke Gable and Carole Lombard were said to be regulars of the establishment, Gable famously befriending the innkeeper and regularly slipping away to go fishing on the Rogue River. Some claim that Clark would occasionally sneak off to Wolf Creek for extramarital dalliances, but it’s also claimed Gable came here to grieve after Lombard’s passing.

Jack London was one of the inn’s most frequent lodgers and spent an entire summer there with his second wife while he wrote the short story “The End of the Story” and finished “Valley of the Moon”. His room has been preserved to appear much as it would have during his visits, and some say his ghost returned to the Inn after his death in 1916. Guests have reported encountering London’s apparition in his room, and his voice has been heard as well.

Dinky Dougal gave birth to their daughter Jane in the Mary Pickford room. Jane revisited the Inn in the late 1900’s and recalled how Dinky’s cooking would attract the wolves nearby to hang out in the yard, hoping for a snack. Wolf Creek was named naturally for the large number of wolves in the area at its founding, and guests to the inn in early days were each given a chamber pot for use during the night, since leaving the safety of the building to use the outhouse could be hazardous. The last recorded sighting of a wolf near the Inn was 1956.

Another commonly encountered ghost is the spirit of a female stagecoach driver, who people like to associate with One-Eyed Charley. ‘One-Eyed Charley’ Parkhurst was a well-known stagecoach driver on the roads south of Oregon during the Gold Rush. Charley had a reputation for being a real roughneck, described as a man that “drove his team hard, spat his tobacco juice harder, and cussed like Sam Clemens”. Charley registered to vote for the first time in 1868 to cast a ballot for Ulysses S. Grant and was known to only miss work on the day after payday (due to being hungover).

When One-Eyed Charley died at the age of 67, the mortician was shocked to learn that ‘Charley’ was actually ‘Charlotte’. Originally an orphan girl, Charley left the orphanage and got into stagecoach driving by dressing and acting like a man. Since Charley proudly voted for Grant in 1868, that potentially makes her the first woman in the US to vote in a presidential election.

The lady stagecoach driver’s voice is often said to be heard in the building when no one is around. She is described as sounding like a little kid singing, kind of playing around, and is often seen in the window from outside. It has not escaped more astute historians that there is one major hang-up in the story: One-Eyed Charley died in 1879, before the Inn was constructed. But since the Inn was converted from the original clapboard lodge form the 1850’s, perhaps there’s enough leeway to not squelch the story out over that detail just yet.

Other ghosts reported include a young woman who has been seen in Clark Gable’s room, and an older man who has been seen inside the building. Both have been caught on EVPs. The building has the full complement of randomized haunting reports: doors opening and closing, phantom scents, lights flickering, piano playing, small items moving on their own. Children are sometimes heard playing in the Ballroom. EVP’s captures are not uncommon for paranormal investigators, including one that reportedly said the name “Beulah”, so there’s speculation that it might be one of the spirits’ names. The kitchen is often reported to have items thrown around the room or people preparing meals may brush across someone who isn’t there. Some guess Dinky Dougal is still overseeing food preparation in the kitchen that meant the world to her.

A more sinister spirit has also been described on the grounds and even within the inn, described as a “vampire-like creature” with the stature of a small man, with ghoulish fangs and blood around its mouth. It has been suggested to be a spirit-of-the-woods or some kind of cryptid, but most people reckon that it is simply the ghost of a mentally disturbed person wishing for witnesses to perceive him as a monster.

There are a few amateur paranormal investigations of Wolf Creek Inn on YouTube one can sift through, and they are about what you would expect: people fumbling to use tarot cards and dowsing rods they’ve never touched before, using ghost hunting phone apps and identifying EVPs that somehow don’t turn up in editing.

There is also an investigation by paranormal punching bags and douche squad extraordinaire, Ghost Adventures. Zak Bagans, of course, is on the scene for all of six minutes before finding a “portal” no one else in all of history has identified, decides that the reported little girl ghost is actually a demon in disguise protecting the portal, and then spends the rest of the episode going after this demon that only he has ever identified there.

In the 1960’s Interstate 5 came through the area, pulling away customers that would go directly past the Inn on old Highway 99, but being only a few hundred feet away from I-5 kept it in close enough proximity to survive. It was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1972, and in 1979, the Oregon Department of Parks & Recreation purchased the Inn to gave it a complete historic renovation. Today, the Inn still takes lodgers (ghost hunting tourists should try to get a reservation in Rooms 6, 8, or 9), and offers self-guided tours of the building Thursday thru Sunday.

Featured image by Marek Szturc on Unsplash

Tales

The Ghosts of Hannah’s Creek Swamp

October 10, 2021 Nick McDonald Leave a comment

History is a tricky thing. Like the old adage, “can’t see the forest for the trees”, there’s a lot of different ways to look at large events depending on the motivations and beliefs of the people not just telling the story, but also the ones researching them.

Take the American Civil War, for instance. It’s a topic that we circle often on this site and on our podcast, mostly because it’s a lynchpin of American culture. The Civil War is one of the primary influences on the history of the United States. If the Revolutionary War is this country’s id, then World War II was our ego and the Civil War is its superego, and while we tend to deal with spirits of a more-or-less physical kind on this site, the ghosts and specters of the Civil War haunt us all in a very morally underpinning way.

I don’t want to get into ethical judgment or debate here, but in general, we look at the Civil War through a scope of ‘the South was performing human rights atrocities, and the North set out to stop them.’ That’s the broad “forest” view. But as anyone who has spent any time of social media will tell you, it is all too easy for a person, having ascribed themselves the virtue of “fighting evil”, to easily excuse themselves of horrific acts so long as they are against someone who represents that evil.

In the Civil War, the North was very much the “invading force”–Northern soldiers pushed into the South much more than the other way around, and the citizens of the South, we’ve found while digging up ghost stories and histories, have many horrific tales of Northern soldiers acting in less than gentlemanly ways as they marched southward. Those tales comprise a portion of “the trees” in our ongoing metaphor.

One such story we’ve come across involved the fact that Union soldiers marching across the South were given leave to raid and plunder the homes and farms they came across as they continued to push. They were given orders not to harm unarmed civilians, and to make sure that they left each family with enough food and supplies to survive, but beyond those meager boundaries they were free to ransack and steal as they desired.

In fairness, most soldiers only took liberties up to what their orders would allow, but this particular ghost story involves one group that decided to play by their own rules. This unit, under the command of one Colonel David Fanning, pillaged and plundered at will, leaving bodies, ashes, and destruction in their wake. The group quickly became known as Fanning’s Marauders.

One of the homes Fanning and his Marauders assaulted was that belonging to Confederate Colonel John Saunders and his wife, near Smithfield, North Carolina. Bloodthirsty Fanning looted everthing of value from the home, then killed the Saunders and razed their homestead to the ground, unknowingly sealing his own fate.

Col. Saunder’s son, Lieutenant John Saunders Jr., learned of the destruction of his home and the death of his parents and vowed revenge on the men who were responsible. The Confederate Army, knowing that Saunders was properly motivated to seek out such brigands, assigned him and his unit to the area near Smithfield and tasked them with the job of ferreting out guerilla fighters, bandits, and other individuals that chose to shy away from the front in lieu of taking advantage of the wartime chaos. The unit did their job as well as any group, but the operation’s time was running out and, to his chagrin, Saunders still hadn’t found his parents’ killer.

Finally, Saunders caught wind of a group of Union soldiers hiding out on an island in Hannah’s Creek Swamp in Johnston County. To scout it out, the Confederates borrowed some civilian clothes and rowed out to the small island under cover of night, hoping not to alert any lookouts the Yankees might have.

Before Fanning and his Marauders could realize what was happening, they found themselves surrounded by Confederates. Lt. Saunders ordered the camp and all the men be searched and took the liberty of searching Fanning himself. Saunders found a small gold crucifix around Fanning’s neck, a crucifix that he immediately recognized as belonging to his murdered mother. Rage instantly took over.

Holding Fanning at gunpoint, Saunders ordered all the Marauders hung right then and there on the island. Fanning was forced to sit and watch as his men had their necks stretched one-by-one. Then, rather than turning Fanning in as a captured soldier, Saunders marched him back to Smithfield, to the Saunders familial home. Saunders took Fanning to the large oak tree overlooking his parents’ newly lain headstones and hung Fanning there, his last moments spent looking upon those graves, the fruits of his hubris being burned into his eyes as the last image he carried to the great hereafter.

Today, visitors to Hannah’s Creek Swamp report random cold spots in the area and unexplained feelings of dread. Some have reported hearing the voices of men begging for their lives, while other hear the creak of branches, heavy with the weight of hanging bodies. Some witnesses even say they’ve seen the bodies themselves, as many as 50 hanging from the trees on a moonlit night.

Now, I’m not telling you this story to pass judgement on men who died over 100 years ago. But what I am interested in is how these stories affect people. We all know someone who will have a knee-jerk reaction to any mention of the Civil War, whichever slant to the congressional house that reaction might elicit. This is a reaction to what they have chose to see as the most poignant summary of the war. But that summary is always going to be a personal thing, and like all personal things, they are going to differ person-to-person, at bare minimum in the details, even if the broad strokes are a shared perspective.

For instance, the above story, near as my research can pull up, is completely fictitious. Research didn’t turn up any David Fannings from the Civil War. Likewise, research turns up John C.C. Saunders, John L. Saunders, John Sherman Saunders, and John Saunders Gooch, but none of them from Smithfield, North Carolina and none of them an obvious choice for the Saunders in the story.

So why would such a story take root and continue to be told over 150 years later, far outliving the men it purportedly is about? Perhaps the answer can be found in the interesting fact that there IS a David Fanning in military records, but a Fanning that fought in the Revolutionary War.

This David Fanning was an infamous Tory and British loyalist, siding with the Redcoats when war was declared. Given the rank of Colonel in the British Army, Fanning was well-known for his blood thirst and regularly killed men off the battlefield, and act soldiers on both sides largely considered dishonorable. When the war ended, Fanning’s atrocities were so numerous that he was one of only a handful of men that the state of North Carolina refused to pardon for their wartime activities. Now a wanted fugitive, Fanning was forced to evacuate to England with the rest of the British forces that departed Charlotte. Fanning stayed in England until he died, decades before the American Civil War even began.

Photo by Marie Bellando-Mitjans on Unsplash

So what happened here? Is this a case of bad record keeping? Was it a flat out lie? Something the locals in Smithfield and Johnston County use to excuse themselves from history’s judgment? Or something more?

Ignoring the haunting for a moment, I like to think that the story of Saunders extracting revenge on Fanning is a way for a state and its people to heal through the power of folklore. Redcoat David Fanning reeked serious damage on the people of North Carolina, both physically and mentally. He slaughtered people like a movie monster and then in the end, just…got away.

When we started The Booze + Spirits Podcast, a big belief guiding our ship was that stories are just as important and the truth, and in some cases more so. The tale of Saunders and Fanning, in my eyes, is a wonderful example of that ideal. People left wanting for justice and retribution, in this case the North Carolinians, created a fictionalized hero to defeat the fictionalized version of their villain. They created their own mythology, their own superhero, to put right things that were left unavenged, just as thousands of small communities had over human history.

By rewriting this legend, they determined their poignant summary. A myth of a hero defeating a villain, and a promise that justice still exists in the world and the fragile hope that keeps humanity from devolving into monsters raging against a cold uncaring universe gets to continue just a little bit longer.

Featured photo by Scott Umstattd on Unsplash

Tales

The Enfield Poltergeist

May 30, 2021 Nick McDonald Leave a comment

This tale originally appeared in Episode 009 – A Haunting in Cognac.

The Enfield haunting started in August of 1977, at 284 Green Street, Brimsdown, Enfield, London, the home of single mother Peggy Hodgson and her four children. The first sign of something odd came as two of the kids, Janet and Johnny, complained that something kept shaking and moving their beds around at bedtime. Peggy told them to knock off the foolishness and go to sleep.

The next night, as the commotion from their room started again, Peggy went to the kids’ room only to find the door obstructed by a chest of drawers. She pushed her way in and squeezed into the room, and shoved the drawers back against the wall, only to have some unseen force push them back towards the door while still in her grip. It was at this point Peggy knew something truly bizarre was at play. The family huddled together and went to a neighbor’s house, the Nottinghams, to wait out the night. Vic Nottingham, a large builder, went over to the Hodgson’s house to try to suss out the issue, but instead found himself shaken by knocks on the walls and ceilings for which he couldn’t determine the cause.

This was just the start of what would become an 18-month marathon of torment. Not just from paranormal activity, but also from a never ending queue of reporters, investigators, lookie-loos, skeptics, believers, debunkers, and rigorous scrutiny that still echoes through on to today. By the time all was said and done, over 30 individuals would claim witness to the incidents in Enfield.

The Hodgson family would be beset by beds lifting, furniture moving, and chairs being overturned. The knocking would race up and down the halls or fade in and out so much that soon nobody felt comfortable sleeping without the lights on. Objects would often launch themselves across the room. Eventually whispers and voices would start making themselves known, and the children themselves would be picked up and tossed around.

The first major witness to the activity was a police constable. She sat and watched as a chair wobbled and moved on it’s own accord. Inspection of the chair revealed no wires or strings or anything else to explain the phenomenon. Though the police sympathized with the family, they had to leave explaining that it wasn’t a police matter since no real crime was being committed.

As Peggy Hodgson continued searching for help, eventually her case reached the ears of the Society for Psychical Research, and investigators Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair arrived to try to make sense of things. Shortly after arriving, Grosse saw a t-shirt fly off of a table right next to him. The two men, over the coming months, would come to see furniture move and spin, find small objects like marbles and Legos tossed around the room (and commented that the tossed toys would be hot to the touch), and eventually captured tape of phantom voices and photos of children reportedly levitating. Grosse remarked, “It’s smarter than we are. Look at its timing–the moment you go out of a room, something happens. You stay in the room for hours, and nothing moves. It knows what we’re up to.”

Grosse and Playfair’s investigation found the activity to be focused primarily on the two girls: Margaret, age 13, and Janet, age 11. Margaret, tried to go up the stairs, in one incident, only to claim something wouldn’t let her leave, and had a hold of a leg that was held aloft in the air behind her. It reportedly took several people to free her. When the girls were separated and sent to stay in different homes for the night, incidents would occur in both places.

But Janet was deemed to be the epicenter of the haunting. Janet was tall and athletic for her age, and seemed to be a favorite target. Grosse and Playfair noted right away “curious whistles and talking coming from Janet’s general direction”. She would often be levitated about against her will or go into trances from which she couldn’t recall any details, and sometimes talk in a deep gruff voice of a man calling himself ‘Bill’.

“I knew when the voices were happening, of course,” Janet said in a 2011 interview, “it felt like something was behind me all of the time. They did all sorts of tests, filling my mouth with water and so on, but the voices still came out.

“The levitation was scary, because you didn’t know where you were going to land. I remember a curtain being wound around my neck, I was screaming, I thought I was going to die.”

Janet “levitating” while Margaret looks on.

Bill claimed to be the former resident of the home, and that he had died while sitting in a chair in the living room, suffering a hemorrhage in his sleep. Records and conversations with the former tenant’s son confirmed these claims.

Janet said, “I felt used by a force that nobody understands. I really didn’t like to think about it too much. I’m not sure the poltergeist was ever truly ‘evil’. It was almost as though it wanted to be part of the family.

“It didn’t want to hurt us. It had died here and wanted to be at rest. The only way it could communicate was through me and my sister.” She also admitted to playing with a Ouija board shortly before the incidents began.

But as the activities and phenomena became more grand so did the scrutiny, and holes in the claims started to emerge. First off, Bill would only talk if Janet and Margaret were together and in another room, separate from everyone else with the door closed. And Bill’s conversations were peculiar in that he would often change the subject mid-conversation, a habit that Janet had as well. He also seemed oddly interested in things a girl Janet and Margaret’s age would deal with in puberty, like menstruation.

Once one loose thread is pulled, others quickly unravel around it. An article about Matthew Manning torn from a magazine was found in the house and raised suspicions, as many of the earliest occurrences seemed to parallel the Manning case. The famous photographs of the girls levitating were pointed out as easily being well timed photos of children jumping on their bed. Even Grosse and Playfair, though never denying an actual haunting was at work, would see evidence of foul play at times. They had on occasion caught Janet banging on the walls or ceiling with a broomstick, or trying to hide Playfair’s tape recorder. Playfair would admit, “Janet was all energy, big for her age, jumping up and running around on the slightest pretext, and talking so fast that I had some difficulty understanding her. She had an impish look and I can understand why some visitors in the later months would suspect her of playing tricks.”

Playfair believed that though the haunting was real, the girls became enamored of the attention and would (sometimes clumsily) create activity for their own benefit, especially on camera. In interviews Janet would often wave excitedly at the camera, but then put her hands over her mouth “in shock” when mysterious voices or noises occurred. When BBC Scotland visited to do a story on the haunting, the girls were asked, “How does it feel to be haunted by a poltergeist?”, to which Janet responded, “It’s not haunted,” only to have Margaret silence her by quickly whispering, “Shut up!” Indeed, one video even caught Janet bending spoons and attempting to bend an iron bar when she thought she wasn’t being watched.

Experts from other disciplines observed the behavior and were left unimpressed. Ventriloquist Ray Alan said all the voices and whispers could easily be done with vocal tricks. Stage magicians Milbourne Christopher and Joe Nickell visited the family as well: Nickell observed that objects only seemed to move or be thrown when no one was looking at them, while Christopher watched Janet retreat to her room, only to see her peek her head out the door as if to see if anyone was watching her, and seemed genuinely flustered to find that someone was. Christopher attributed the haunting to, “a little girl who wanted to cause trouble and who was very, very clever.”

The girls were blamed for wanting the attention, especially from two doting male investigators so recently after their father had left the family (by coincidence, Grosse had lost his own daughter, also named Janet, in a motorcycle accident the year before). Their mother Peggy was accused of trying to scam the Housing Council into finding the family a better place to live. Janet was bullied in school, getting called ‘Ghost Girl’. One brother was called ‘freak from the ghost house’ and spit at in the street. Many psychiatrists and health professionals thought that the whole incident would just end if Grosse and Playfair would leave the family alone. Eventually Mrs. Hodgson got to the point that, with the exception of Grosse and Playfair, she refused to welcome others into her house.

Despite the deep cuts Ocham’s Razor seemed to be leaving everywhere, Grosse and Playfair continued to be convinced of the haunting’s genuineness at its core. They had seen too many things they considered to be unexplainable to throw the whole case away on a couple of childish pranks. Indeed, at one point Janet and Margaret even admitted to faking the whole thing, but were convinced by Grosse and Playfair to recant their confession. Playfair said, “It almost seemed that the poltergeist were out to incriminate her (Janet), by proliferating third-rate phenomena in the presence of first-rate observers.”

According to Janet, a priest visited in 1978. The activity calmed down after that, but never totally subsided. Janet left home at age 16, and married young. She says, “I lost touch with everything, all the coverage of the case in paranormal books. My mum felt people walked over her at that time. She felt exploited.”

Her brother Johnny tragically died at the age of 14 from cancer, shortly after the press attention drifted away. Bobby, the youngest, felt watched up until the day he moved out. Janet’s mother, Peggy, passed away in 2003 from breast cancer, and still lived in the home at the time. Janet says the presence in the home never fully went away. “Years later, when Mum was alive, there was always a presence there — something watching over you. As long as people don’t meddle the way we did with Ouija boards, it is quite settled. It is a lot calmer than when I was a child. It is at rest, but will always be there.”

After Peggy’s death, a new family moved in, a mother with four boys. They reported constantly feeling watched and regularly hearing whispers and talking from downstairs at night. The night before they moved out, the 15-year old was woken in the night to see a shadowy man enter his room. He ran to his mother’s room and told her, “we’ve got to move.” The following tenants asked not to be informed of the home’s history, hoping their children’s ignorance of the past would keep them hidden from the haunting’s attention.

The haunting was dramatized in the film “The Conjuring 2”, a film series circling around the lives of demonologists and paranormal investigators Ed & Lorraine Warren. While the film portrays them as heroes of the haunting and does a decent job of fitting many of the reported incidents into the narrative (despite a classic Warren climax that always ends up attributing the incident to ‘demons’) , in reality they were only on the scene for a day and quickly left. Playfair later reported that Ed Warren told him that, “someone could make a lot of money off this story”. The Warrens’ own organization, NESPR, makes no claims that the Warrens played a significant role in the Enfield haunting.

Janet later did admit that the girls tried to fake some of the phenomena, but says that every time they tried Grosse or Playfair would catch them. When asked how much of the phenomenon they were responsible for, she said, “about 2-percent.”

“I didn’t want to bring it up again while my mum was alive,” Janet says, “but now I want to tell my story. I don’t care whether people believe me or not, I went through this, and it was true.”

Tales

The Bandage Man

February 23, 2021 Nick McDonald 1 Comment

This story was originally told in Ep. 003 – Salty Bill’s Limp Richard.

For decades, the forests and back roads of Cannon Beach, Oregon have been haunted by their own mummy-like monster. He harasses teens and jumps into unsuspecting vehicles, and is known locally as ‘The Bandage Man’.

Highway 101 runs up the length of the Pacific Ocean in the continental US. It’s infamous for being an amazingly gorgeous drive, but also extremely winding and curvy as it hugs the coastline, and among the many small seaside towns along the 101 sits Cannon Beach.

Photo by **Tim Mossholder** from **Pexels**

A stretch of this winding highway just north of Cannon Beach is the focus of the Bandage Man’s legend. The stretch of road nicknamed ‘Bandage Man Road’ is actually an abandoned part of Highway 101, long since replaced by a more forgiving and less dangerous parcel of pavement. Driving Bandage Man Road has become something of a rite of passage by the local teens after they get their driving license, braving upsetting the Bandage Man on his own turf.

The Bandage Man is known to lurk Cannon Beach’s forests and roads, covered in bandages like the classic Universal Pictures depiction of The Mummy, and is known to reek with the smell of rotting flesh. He is most known for going after parked or passing vehicles, jumping into unguarded truck beds or the back seat of convertibles, and his activity seems to increase on nights of heavy lightning.

Photo by **Wojtek Pacześ** from **Pexels**

Most legends place The Bandage Man’s origin back to the 1950’s, though some go back as far as the 1930’s. The primary story says that he was a logger (though this is sometimes substituted with an electrician or some other tradesman) who had an on-the-job accident and got “chopped up”. He was quickly bandaged up and placed in an ambulance, but the vehicle got caught in a landslide on the highway on its way to the hospital. By the time rescue crews got to the ambulance and unburied it, the injured man had completely disappeared.

Reports of the Bandage Man began almost immediately and have continued through today, though the biggest chunk of reports come from the 1950’s and 60’s. His favorite past time appears to be harassing teens in vehicles. One tale involves a pair of teens who had parked on the side of the road in a pick-up truck for a little canoodling. Suddenly, they felt the truck dip to one side, like someone was climbing into the bed. The whole truck began to shake violently, and the teens looked back to see the Bandage Man in the bed, rocking the vehicle back-and-forth and pounding on the cab. The panicked teens started the truck and drove away, but by the time they got to town the Bandage Man had disappeared.

The Bandage Man’s pattern is fairly consistent: Find teens parked in the road and scare them, disappear before help is available, repeat. He sometimes leaves behind smatterings of smelly bandages or even chunks of rotten meat. One out-of-character but truly horrifying tale tells of him smashing the window to Bill’s Tavern & Grillhouse in town so he could reach in and snatch someone’s dog, running away and eating the poor creature.

Like any good local legend, local pranksters and troublemakers have found ways to use the tales to their own ends. Indeed, there are occasional cases of teens getting caught or admitting to dressing up as The Bandage Man to cause trouble, so in the end it has become challenging to tell just where the line between local legend and local prank lay.

Featured image by elijah akala from Pexels

Photo by **Joshua Woroniecki** from **Pexels**

Tales

Julie on the Rooftop

February 17, 2021 Nick McDonald Leave a comment

This story first appeared in Ep. 001 – Rooftop Lady.

There’s a house on 734 Royal St. in New Orleans with a very peculiar ghost. She appears as a beautiful golden woman, sitting or walking in the building’s roof top, and apart from a pair of hoop earrings, she’s completely naked.

According to legend, the woman is named Julie, and she was madly in love with the building’s owner, a wealthy businessman by the name of Zachary. Depending on the telling, Julie is either a slave or a well-to-do lady, and is usually described as being of mixed-race, contributing to her golden hue.

The tale goes back to the 1850’s. Julie was in love with Zachary and wanted to be his wife, but to Zachary she was just a plaything, an object for a few moments of fun and nothing more. Their trysts would occur on the building’s third floor, and Julie was forbidden from visiting the lower levels. Zachary would often meet with her secretly on her floor, then return to the lower floor where he’d be having grand parties and or sometimes long chess games with his friends.

Eventually, one December night, Julie lays down an ultimatum, demanding that Zachary marries her. Hoping he can finally get her to drop the subject, he says he’ll only marry her if she strips naked, climbs out of the roof, and stays there all night to prove her love.

Zachary figured the notion was settled, and left downstairs to see to his other guests, but Julie was too determined to back out now. She stripped buck naked, climbed out onto the slanted roof, and spent the night out there, where she sadly died of exposure before the sun came up.

The next winter was the first time her ghost appeared. People reported a slender, naked, golden skinned woman wearing only hoop earrings, huddled up and pacing the roof trying to build up some body heat. Often times people even reported seeing her collapse up there.

Other apparitions associated with Julie include an ethereal chessboard in the third story windows seen on stormy nights, sometimes being played by a man or two. There have also been reports of Zachary being seen through the windows of the building or wandering in the garden below.

Witnesses to Julie’s appearances continue to this day, and local lore says if you write her a note on yellow paper with blue ink about your love problems and leave it next to the house, she may solve it for you.

Featured photo by KEN COOPER from Pexels. 734 Royal St. is a privately owned building today, so please don’t harass the residents about ghost hunting.

Tales

Moran Manor Investigation

February 12, 2021 Nick McDonald Leave a comment

We figured that we should probably share some of the photos from our investigation of home to Alice Rheem, Moran Manor. As we discussed in Episode 008, Moran Manor is the crown jewel of the Rosario Resort & Spa, on Orcas Island, part of the San Juan Island chain in Puget Sound.

Nick and his wife Kel visited in late January 2021. Winter being the island’s off-season, and with Covid restrictions in play both by the state of Washington and San Juan County, so there was not much to do on the island at the time. The island’s main industries are tourism, agriculture, and outdoor recreation, so with tourism hampered by the season and restrictions, and outdoor recreation made uncomfortable by the winter storm blowing in from the Pacific over the weekend they visited, it was good that they had ‘ghost hunting’ on their agenda because there was precious little else to do.

The resort covers 40 acres of the island, a scant sliver compared to the 7,000 acres originally owned by Robert Moran. The majority of the original Moran estate was donated to the parks service, creating the 5,000+ acre Moran State Park. The centerpiece of the park, covered with tons of waterfalls and hiking, biking, and horseback trails, it Mount Constitution, the highest point in the San Juans at just under 2,400 ft.

A shot from the top of Mt. Constitution. Our Bellingham friends may notice the small wisp of their city in the upper center bay, and Mt. Baker and the Two Sisters on the horizon.

Moran Manor itself sits near the foot of the mountain, right on the edge of the state park, constructed by Robert Moran himself. Moran, a shipbuilder and former mayor of Seattle, arrived on the West Coast in 1875 with only a dime in his pocket. He worked his way up from an engineer to running one of the largest shipyards in America, supplying transportation for much of the Yukon gold rush and building the USS Nebraska.

Construction on Moran Manor finished in 1909, after Moran’s doctor pleaded with him to take things easy for his health. The plan worked; island life agreed with Moran, outliving the doctor’s expectations by over 30 years, and in the 1930’s the home was sold to Donald Rheem, the water heater and heat pump magnate.

Rheem intended to use the Manor as a summer home, but as he ran out of ways to subdue his wild socialite wife, Alice, he decided his last resort was to send her out to Orcas Island where the amount of trouble she could cause would be at a minimum. Naturally, the seclusion only instilled desperation in Alice, and it was soon a regular to find Alice donning her favorite red dress, climb aboard her Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and drive into the small nearby town of Eastsound to drink and play cards.

Alice died in 1959, reportedly from complications with alcoholism, but it appears she hasn’t yet left. Alice’s ghost has often been reported on the grounds, sometimes walking down the stairway at the main entrance in her nightgown, occasionally in the parking lot departing into town on her motorcycle. Today, the Manor is part of a resort and spa, and many guests and employees have reported encounters with Alice over the years.

Living in nearby Whatcom County, Nick decided to investigate, and reserved a child-free weekend at the resort to entice his wife, Mikael, to come along. Mikael is not a believer in ghosts and spirits (with the possible exception of theatre ghosts), but played along and let Nick have his fun.

Though the Manor building itself no longer has guests overnight, much of the building is open for free exploration (some areas were closed off this weekend simply for Covid restrictions). A large portion of the second floor has been converted into a museum space for Robert Moran and his accomplishments. Among the artifacts were stories of shipbuilding, items from Robert’s office and his photography habit, odds and ends, and some of his stained glasswork collection.

The grandest feature of the second story is the two-story Aeolian pipe organ. During less restrictive times, the Manor is known to show old silent movies scored by the organ (most famously the original 1929 Phantom of the Opera). It was in this room that Nick thought he collected potential EVP’s.

Nick was using two pieces of equipment as he searched the museum, a micro camcorder and a voice recorder app on his cell phone (he has never declared himself a serious ghost hunter). While in the main music room, Nick heard a creak from the floor above him, though Nick and Mikael were the only people in the building above the first floor. In this clip, you can hear a series of audio pops, Mikael ask Nick what’s going on, and Nick answers he thought he heard someone above him. In the background is music being piped into the room, likely by CD. The creak happens roughly where the pops occurs.

Nick hears a creak

We noticed what may be a whisper under the pops, so cleaned that up and isolated it as best we could. Nick thought it sounded like someone saying, “never around”.

Never ’round?

Having thought they heard something, Nick and Mikael sat down in the music room and just listened for a bit. That is when they recorded another voice without an owner.

Unclaimed male voice

Though is it possible to hear people talking on the first floor (as evidenced in the full walkthrough recording) it is more muffled and continuous than the voice in this clip. Nick thought it sounded like a man saying, “twelve”.

Twelve?

We are making the full walkthrough recording available for anyone who wants to go through it on their own, but fair warning: Nick often forgot that he was carrying a recorder, and let his sleeve brush against the mic a lot and once or twice even absent-mindedly put it in his pocket.

There was little about Alice Rheem in the building, despite a plethora of information on the website. The bar has a drink named after her, The Lady in Red, and Mikael managed to locate a collection of old Vogue magazines owned by Alice in one of the bathrooms.

So, did Nick collect evidence that Alice or someone else still is creeping around Moran Manor? Maybe? Nick’s evidence is pretty thin, at best, but it definitely is interesting enough to warrant a second look in the future. Until then, the closest Nick got to finding a ghost was accidentally taking a picture of a park ranger while looking something up on his phone:

Ghost Cows of Farm Road 511

Brush Arbor Ghost Turkey

Ghost Monkey Bridge

Santa Anna’s Ghostly Guard Dogs

The Ghost Horse of the Llano Estacado

Les Lutins

The Little Red Man of Destiny

Le Nain Rouge

La Lechuza

Tah-tah-kle’-ah

Stikini

It's like a drink with death!