#tragictale

In the beginning of the 1900s many different aspects of America were changing alongside the start of the new century. New industries began to emerge, urban populations were growing, and the styles of the American people and their environments began to shift. Ushering in these new styles were artists, but some of them worked on pieces much larger than any canvas. In the early part of the 1900s American architecture began to shift, and one of the biggest names in the field was Frank Lloyd Wright. By the time Wright died in 1959 he was an icon of American architecture with landmark structures all over the world. He had a long and storied career, but one major event in Wright’s story does not involve style, bricks, and blueprints. In August 1914 Wright was in Illinois working on Chicago's Midway Gardens. He had no idea a bloodbath was unfolding back home.

By the time the calendar pages flipped to welcome in 1914 Frank Lloyd Wright was both famous, and controversial. The forty-seven-year-old architect was married to his wife Catherine and the pair had six children together, but for the last eleven years the Wright family had been broken. The rift unknowingly began within the Oak Park Women’s Club where Catherine Wright and Martha Cheney (also referred to as Mamah) were both members and the two women became close friends as did their husbands, Frank Lloyd Wright and Edwin Cheney. The Wrights and Cheneys were “neighbors and intimate friends” and as stated by the Fort Wayne Sentinel on February 26th 1912, “To the Cheneys the door to the Wrights always was open, and vice versa.” It only made sense that when Edwin Cheney was looking for a new home he approached his friend and in 1903 he commissioned Wright to build a house in Oak Park, Illinois. Edwin’s intent was to have a home for his family, but hiring Wright only tore it apart when the architect began an affair with his wife.

Frank Lloyd Wright circa 1953. Image via wikipedia.com.

By 1909 what may have started as a slow simmering secret in 1903 had transformed into a plan of action. Wright had made his way to Europe and was there on the day that Martha contacted her husband. She was in Colorado with the children when she reached out to Edwin requesting that he come get them from her, and when he arrived he was met by his children, but not Martha. Without his knowledge she had already left the country to meet Wright in Europe. The pair stayed overseas for approximately one year before Wright arrived back in the United States in 1910. Although Wright had returned to the States, Martha remained in Europe where she officially filed for divorce from Edwin on the grounds of abandonment. Edwin did not contest the divorce and while Martha was in Europe she resumed the use of her maiden name, Borthwick, and continued working on a project she had taken up translating the works of Swedish writer Ellen Key. With Borthwick still in Europe, Wright set his focus on another architectural project, but this was not for a client. This was to construct a home for himself and Borthwick, and he set his sights on Wisconsin.

By 1911 Wright may have believed everything was headed in the best direction. He had secured 600 acres of land near Spring Green, Wisconsin (signed for by his mother in order to not draw attention to the purchase), Martha had returned from Europe and after temporarily staying in Canada with her children, was back in the United States. In August of 1911 her divorce was finalized from her husband and it was in that same month she and Frank moved into Taliesin, a 75,000 sq foot estate that Frank built near Spring Green to serve as their new home. It was just before Christmas that year that the news of Frank and Martha living together made it to the surrounding village. The goal may have been to quietly start a new life, but the news of the two living together, especially since Wright’s wife never agreed to a divorce, reverberated loudly and the opinions on the two were harsh and unforgiving.

Wright may have named his new home “Taliesin” (meaning “shining brow” in Welsh) but the press referred to it as a “love cottage,” and “castle of love” both of which sounded far kinder than what the community had to say about it. The superintendent of Iowa County’s schools told a reporter “The scandal is bound to have a demoralizing effect on the school children of the community. It is an outrage to allow young men and women and boys and girls to grow up in the belief that a man and woman can go disregard the marriage bonds.” Threats were made, neighbors asked for the police to arrest Wright, and yet there was nothing that could be done. The construction on Taliesin continued and the pair went about their lives seemingly unbothered by the scathing opinions of them. The biggest question being asked was how Wright and Borthwick could possibly do this to their families. According to The Fort Wayne News and Sentinel published on February 26th 1912:

“More and more Mrs. Wright devoted herself to her home and her growing children. More and more Mr. Wright closeted himself with his work and gave himself up to his architectural dreams. When he sought recreation, diversion, communion of spirit, he found them less and less in the companionship of Mrs. Wright….Then he discovered that Mrs. Cheney was more nearly on his plane of thought, that she sympathized the closer with him, shared his dreams and ideals, appreciated his efforts, and gave him the inspiration for work which, he complained, he could not draw from the companionship at his own fireside. Thus, thought Mr. Wright both fate and the law were against him and his normal development.”

Clipping from The Washington Herald on December 31st 1911. Image via newspapers.com

Wright gave his own explanation, telling reporters that “Two women were necessary for a man of artistic mind—one to be the mother of his children and the other to be his mental companion, his inspiration and soul mate” and voicing his opinion that normal rules simply did not apply to him, saying “Laws and rules are made for the average. The ordinary man cannot live without rules to guide his conduct. It is infinitely more difficult to live without rules, but that is what the really honest, sincere, thinking man is compelled to do.”

Clipping from the Cincinnati Explorer on December 31st 1911. Image via newspapers.com.

Wright may have felt unstoppable, but his time with Mamah in their little paradise called Taliesin would not last long before it came crashing down.

On August 15th 1914 Frank Lloyd Wright was nearly two hundred miles from his new home, working in Chicago on the Chicago Midway Gardens. Back home in Taliesin, Martha and her two children eight-year-old Martha and twelve-year-old John, sat down on the porch for lunch. Also sitting down for lunch inside the main dining room was the construction crew still working on the home, settling in around a table and waiting to be served by Julian Carlton, a thirty-year-old man who worked at Taliesin as a servant and handyman. Carlton’s wife Gertrude prepared the food and after serving everyone soup, Carlton told his wife she had to leave the property.

It was shortly after that that Carlton went back onto the porch with a hatchet and brutally murdered Martha and her two children.

The crew seated in the dining room twenty-five feet away may not have even had time to process what was going on. Nineteen-year-old Herbert Fritz was among those seated at the table when he and the others heard loud swishing noises outside the door. Then they saw it, liquid pouring underneath the door and covering the floor. Even if the smell didn’t give it away first another man in the room, thirty-five year old carpenter William Weston knew what it was. Just before eating, Carlton had asked Weston permission to go get a canister of gasoline in order to clean some rugs. Weston said yes and now the gasoline was pouring into the room. The door was locked. Within moments the entire room was ablaze.

One of the first people to get out was Fritz, managing to break a window and escape the fire, rolling down a hill to extinguish the flames trying to devour him. Fritz’s timing was what may have saved him from a much crueler fate, as people from the dining room scrambled and broke through the barricaded door they were met with curtains of fire from Carlton spreading more gasoline along outside walls. Others rushed to broken windows believing they found an escape only to learn the horrible truth when they discovered Carlton waiting for them with the hatchet on the other side. Weston was one who fell right into the path of Carlton and was attacked with the hatchet but he was able to run, followed by Carlton, until he was again struck with the weapon. Believing him to be dead Carlton then returned to the home but Weston was in fact still alive, as was Fritz, and a third man who made it out of the house, landscape gardener David Lindblom. With an inferno of flames, shock, and confusion raging behind them the three men found each other and ran together to a home half a mile away to call for help.

Ciipping from Springfield News Sun August 23rd 1914. Image via newspapers.com.

When the smoke cleared the authorities were left with a horrifying scene. Multiple bodies were strewn both inside the home and outside, succumbing to either fire, a hatchet, or both. The building, intended to be a quiet place of peace and a starting point for new lives, was now a charred and silent tomb with Martha and her two children laying slaughtered in the remnants of the porch. Carlton was later found in the basement, hiding inside the furnace where he was alive, but barely conscious. Looking to exit this life alongside the horrors he created he had swallowed acid, severely damaging his throat and stomach but leaving him alive. However, Carlton’s still-breathing body would not bring any clarity to the situation. The former employee of Wright plead not guilty and refused to speak or give any explanation for his actions. When questioned, his wife Gertrude shed small glimmers of explanation, stating that Carlton had grown increasingly paranoid and hostile, even taking to sleeping with the hatchet next to him. She also confirmed that she and her husband were terminated by Wright and they were due to take a train back to Chicago the night of the attack. For seven long weeks Carlton remained in prison before dying of starvation, unable to consume anything due to the damage from the acid he swallowed.

Taliesen after the fire. Image via wikipedia.com.

When Wright received the note in Chicago it scarcely conveyed the tragedy that had unfolded in his home nearly two hundred miles away. Reading simply “Taliesin destroyed by fire” he would not learn until later that the loss was more than a house. Seven people were killed in Carlton’s rampage (David Lindblom, one of the men who ran for help later died from his burns) and with no definite explanation to the reason and his new family suddenly ripped from his life Wright now had to decide how to move ahead after the tragedy. He wrote a lengthy letter to his neighbors, an essay that sang the praises of Martha, addressed how their relationship was covered by the press, and thanking them for any and all courtesy extended to her while living in Taliesin. He also revealed two, probably surprising, actions. For one, Martha was buried in an unmarked grave in a small chapel cemetery near the home. And second, that he fully intended to rebuild Taliesin as a memorial to her, while also still continuing to live there as his permanent home.

Clipping from the Ogden Standard Examiner on September 5th 1914. Image via newspapers.com.

Wright rebuilt the home, now referred to as “Taliesin II,” and he did not stay there alone. After his wife finally agreed to a divorce Wright married again in 1923, to a woman named Maude Noel, who wrote him a condolence letter after the tragedy at Taliesin. But, the house was not done with him and in April of 1925 the home was gutted by an electrical fire. Like the first fire, he set out to rebuild it, finishing it later that year only to lose it to foreclosure in 1927, the same year he and Maude divorced. With some financial assistance he was able to re-purchase it back the following year ushering in the era of “Taliesin III.”

Wright used Taliesin III as his primary home and studio until the end of his life, sharing it with his third wife Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich, establishing a fellowship for architectural students, and designing some of his most famous works there including Fallingwater and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Upon his death in 1959 the home was left to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation who conducted renovations until 1990 when a nonprofit organization known as Taliesin Preservation Inc. (TPI) took over the location. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and in 2019 it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Taliesen in 2024. Image via Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Today, Taliesin still stands in Spring Green, Wisconsin and is visited by tens of thousands of people every year looking to walk the halls that were not only crafted by, but called home, by one of the world’s most prolific, influential, and important pioneers of architecture. The website for Taliesin welcomes the viewers with the words “take a stroll through paradise” and it’s easy to see how it earns that name. With its open floor plan, dramatic spaces, stone, ample natural light, and its integration into the natural landscape around it, the home is a picture of tranquility. It is hard to picture that beneath this air of artistic peace lies a tormented history filled with controversy, turmoil, and the horrific and bloody loss of eight lives that for a period of time marked it as the site of the deadliest mass murder in Wisconsin’s history.

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Sources:

Conradt, Stacy. “The Terrible Crime at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin.” Mental Floss, 5 Dec. 2017, www.mentalfloss.com/article/28519/taliesin-tragedy.

Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. “About Frank Lloyd Wright.” Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 2019, franklloydwright.org/frank-lloyd-wright/.

Klein, Christopher. “The Massacre at Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Love Cottage” | HISTORY.” HISTORY, 8 June 2017, www.history.com/articles/the-massacre-at-frank-lloyd-wrights-love-cottage.

“Mystery of the Murders at Taliesin.” Bbc.co.uk, 14 Jan. 2001, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/1110359.stm.

“Take Queer View of Marital Life.” Newspapers.com, 26 Feb. 1912, www.newspapers.com/image/29239543/?match=1&terms=Frank%20Lloyd%20Wright%20.

“Taliesin History.” Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, www.taliesinpreservation.org/taliesin-history/.

Founded in 1670, the town of Wallingford, Connecticut has witnessed centuries of change. Once connected to multiple influential figures in Colonial history and the American Revolution, by the 1800s the town became an industrial hub and in the later part of the 19th century Wallingford found itself featured across headlines all over the country. Unfortunately for the residents of the town, this new notoriety had nothing to do with Wallingford’s industry and everything to do with a horrible discovery.

On the morning of August 8th 1886 brothers Edward and Joseph Terrell, their friend Giles Sommers, and Edward’s dog were walking along an isolated dirt road looking for berries when they noticed something out of place. Hidden under some bushes was an 18” X 30” wooden crate with lettering on the outside claiming it was holding a “dozen pairs of finely stitched men’s shoes.” It seemed innocent enough, but when the dog approached the box its curiosity quickly turned to barking and whines of warning. Then there was the stench. The men left the scene, later returning with crowbars. When they pried open the box there were no shoes. There was straw, soaked in blood and packed around a headless human torso wrapped in tar paper.

The news of the horrific discovery sent shockwaves through Wallingford and beyond. The medical examiners estimated the torso belonged to a man between twenty-five and forty years old, weighing anywhere from 150 to 175 pounds, and that they had been dead between five and ten days before being discovered packed into the shoebox. Interestingly, the stomach was removed by the medical examiner and they discovered that there was a large amount of arsenic present in the victim’s system before he died. While this was all valuable information, it was the only information and the hope for answers quickly faded with authorities openly admitting there was very little to go on. As stated by the coroner, “This is the most mysterious case I have had since I was appointed coroner. With one exception, I have found out exactly what caused death, but this case puzzles me more than any yet. I can’t say whether or not I have obtained any clues.”

Newspaper headline about the body in the box. Image via newenglandhistoricalsiciety.com

The torso had no other bruises or injuries and it appeared the limbs and head were severed haphazardly with a knife or similar dull object. It was buried the next day but the questions continued to permeate headlines and conversations. One of the first suspected victims was Arthur J. Cooley, a Civil War veteran with very well known problems with drinking. Cooley worked at a local slaughterhouse for two decades before abruptly retiring and collecting a pension of $1,500 and his family had recently reported him missing after he was seen leaving a tavern but never returning home. But, Cooley eventually reappeared after an extended time away drinking and the mystery resumed. The next theory was more of a stretch and asked the people of Wallingford to look back to a series of fires that destroyed multiple buildings in town. Three years earlier Frank H. Morse Jr. was accused of setting two buildings ablaze that his father, Frank H. Morse Sr., was using for glass production. There was no question that it was arson, the guard was drugged prior to the fires breaking out and the charges were that Morse had his son intentionally set the blaze in order to collect insurance money. The trial of Frank H. Morse Jr. was recent, taking place only five months before the torso was found but due to a lack of evidence and Morse Jr. having an alibi that he was home the night of the fires, the charges were dropped. If Morse was truly home the night of the fires, did his father have someone else commit the crime for them and did they end up in the box as a punishment for not covering up their tracks well enough to prevent the suspicion of arson? When the torso was discovered the arson case was still open and people wondered if there was a connection. Others wondered if the murder was not an isolated incident. Only a few weeks before finding the torso in the box Edward Terrell was walking in the same area with his dog when he found the body of a deceased woman. Medical schools were questioned, rosters of missing persons were scoured, and there was no answer to who met their grisly end with a stomach full of arsenic but without their limbs and head.

With no human connections being made, authorities looked to the box for answers. The torso was packed into a wooden crate that was manufactured for a shoe factory located over 100 miles away in Fall River, Massachusetts. From there the box was filled with shoes and shipped to a wholesale boot and shoe dealer in Chicago, Illinois who then sent it to a local shoe shop. Once the crate was unpacked it was thrown in the back of one of these shops before it was sold to a man who was never identified. While this was the fairly normal lifecycle of these types of shipping cartons, the fact that it was in Chicago raised some more suspicions. Only a few months earlier in May 1886 Chicago was the site of the bloody Haymarket Riot where striking laborers fighting for workers’ rights clashed with police in Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown into the crowd killing multiple people leading to the arrest of eight labor leaders and the eventual execution of half of them. With the riot fresh in their minds, the crate’s ties to Chicago, and no other leads, people began to wonder if the crate was shipped back home from Chicago containing the body of someone involved in the riot that fell to a different form of  justice.

The absence of answers left a lot of room for speculation to thrive. One story claimed that a mysterious bag was seen at the bottom of a well that disappeared before it could be recovered and a young man claimed that he saw the box sitting in the bushes for over a week before it was found. Rumors and theories swirled but in the weeks following the discovery there were some random, but very real additions to the story. Early in the investigation pieces of scalp were found near the site of the body in the box but they provided no groundbreaking information other than the pieces pointing to the victim having dark hair. While these pieces of scalp could not be proven to be from the same victim, another discovery had a connection that was hard to ignore. On September 26th a farmer found a pair of arms and legs near the site where the bloody box was found. The limbs were not at the site when the box was originally discovered and they were wrapped in the same tar paper as the torso.

With these seemingly connected, terrible finds people began speaking up. A local Wallingford woman came forward and told the authorities that in early August a disheveled, bearded man knocked on her door asking for directions to a nearby pond. He was carrying a sack and was wearing a shirt covered in blood but she assumed he was homeless and directed him to the water. She stated that later on she saw him again, walking past her house without the sack and wearing a clean shirt. With the first real lead finally coming out the police prepared for a manhunt, but only a few days later the woman totally recanted her story stopping any progress. Another woman named Mabel Preston claimed at first to know everything regarding the murder and was subpoenaed by the court but once she was under oath she changed her story, saying she knew absolutely nothing about the crime. She didn’t have much time to change her mind again, two years later Mabel committed suicide.

With the only two possible leads revoking their information the case was left floating in limbo until it gradually began to fade from the headlines and public memory. Major news about the case would not appear again until 1926 when the former police chief of Wallingford came forward with a shocking claim. Dan O’Reilly was chief of police when the bloody box was discovered in 1886 and four decades later he spoke exclusively to The Journal, not to discuss his opinions of the case, but to say that he knew exactly who the murderer was. According to O’Reilly, he had “several reasons” for never disclosing the truth about the killing including: “…the fact that the perpetrator of the crime, that is the actual killer, has now been dead nearly twenty years and I know of no good reasons why the descendants or relatives of the murderer should be made to bear the ignominy which revelation of his identity would impose on them.” But who were these descendants that would be so affected? O’Reilly told the paper that contrary to opinions, this murderer was not some rogue bloodthirsty madman or a cold-blooded predator, he stated the killer “was no outcast beyond the pale of society, but the scion of one of New England’s oldest families, a native of New Haven county, whose ancestry traces directly back to the Mayflower.” He also revealed details about the victim, that he was a resident of Fairfield county and that he was brutally murdered to silence him because he was aware of people involved in a “serious crime” committed against the state of Connecticut. Despite these salacious claims and the decades gone bye he reiterated that he would not change his mind on his secrecy, stating: “…I shall carry this secret, already locked in my heart for twenty years, to the grave with me.” O’Reilly kept his promise, never disclosing the name of the killer.

Story printed by The Journal where former chief Dan O'Reilly claimed to know the killer. Image via newspapers.com.

The “Wallingford Shoebox Murder” was never solved and is still considered an open case despite the trail going cold nearly 140 years ago. Today the most prominent remnant of the crime stands silent, but in plain sight with the road where the box was discovered now being officially named Shoebox Road.

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Sources:

Kilianski, Michael. “The Connecticut Shoebox Murder Mystery: America’s Oldest Cold Case.” Blogspot.com, 23 May 2021, creativehistorystories.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-connecticut-shoebox-murder-mystery.html.

Landrigan, Leslie. “The Mystery of the Wallingford Shoebox Murder.” New England Historical Society, 8 Aug. 2015, newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/the-mystery-of-the-wallingford-shoebox-murder/.

Mangan, Gregg. “The Shoe Box Murder Mystery.” ConnecticutHistory.org, 8 Aug. 2020, connecticuthistory.org/the-shoebox-murder-mystery/.

Strolling through the city of Richmond, Virginia means taking a walk through one of the oldest cities in America and being able to visit sights and structures that saw countless chapters of the earliest parts of American history. Visiting Jefferson Park, located on Union Hill, offers visitors walking paths, a playground, and a picturesque view of the modern city skyline. It’s a pleasant scene, and one that does not at all hint at what lay hidden underneath the earth of Jefferson Park.

Skyline of Richmond, Virginia. Image via Bruce Emmerling, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Church Hill Tunnel of Richmond, Virginia was built with a purpose of advancement, looking to leave behind the aftermath of the Civil War and bring in new progress. Completed in 1872 by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), the railway was built as an extension in order to reach a new coal pier located in the city of Newport News, bringing a new logistical connection to the exportation of coal from the area. The plan sounded good, and upon completion the tunnel was one of the longest in the country at nearly 4,000 feet in length, but the initial victory of completing the tunnel came after multiple problems that should have been seen as a warning.

The first issue with the Church Hill Tunnel was the very earth it was being constructed from. Unlike other tunnels carved through bedrock, Church Hill was created through layers of limestone and soft clay, deeply unstable soil that would shift and swell up when exposed to any moisture and shrink back again when dried. With the volatile soil structure there was no way to ensure the safety of the tunnel and during construction there were multiple instances of portions of it collapsing, taking the lives of the men working inside. Land around the work area began to react to the construction and in one instance the ground gave way, toppling the house of a minister and breaking a gas line. The marvel was also a menace and upon the completion of a new viaduct in 1901 the Church Hill Tunnel was closed and fell into disuse. It should have stayed that way.

While the city of Richmond grew and flourished in the early part of the twentieth century the Church Hill Tunnel lay dormant, looming like a great void out of the earth. That is, until 1925 when after over twenty years of non-use the city decided it was a monster worth bringing back to life.

Given that the tunnel had been left dormant for decades there were extensive repairs that needed to be completed before it could be used once again. These repairs were underway on October 2nd 1925, a cold and rainy day in Richmond that seemed ordinary before the Church Hill Tunnel experienced something that was both unthinkable, but also tragically familiar. The tunnel was bustling with activity and engineer Tom Mason was guiding a train with ten additional flat cars into the west entrance of the tunnel on his first day as an engineer. Then, the bricks began to fall. The collapse of the tunnel was as fast as it was terrible with bricks, debris, and clay falling all around the workers and the train, burying it under the weight of the earth. Electric wires were cut plunging everyone into darkness and some of the trapped men took out their knives and started slashing wildly into the dark, trying to cut through anyone who stood in their way of getting out. Workers scrambled to escape, most miraculously making it to the eastern entrance a mile away and walking from the site with their lives. But others were not as lucky, 190 feet of the tunnel had fallen in on itself and the entire train was buried along with the bodies of Tom Mason and at least two other workers. Fireman Benjamin F. Mosby was hard at work shoveling coal when the locomotive was crushed. He was able to escape but when he staggered out of the east entrance he was horrifically scalded from the steam from the engine and his teeth were broken. He died later that night at Grace Hospital.

The Richmond Times Dispatch reporting on the tunnel collapse.

In the aftermath of the tunnel collapse there were questions, but unfortunately the reason why it happened was known, the tunnel’s history was marred by multiple collapses, and this was not even the first time it claimed human lives. The bigger question now was how to proceed. The body of engineer Mason was able to be recovered but finding the other workers, later identified as Richard Lewis and H. Smith, was impossible. After nine days of efforts to recover their bodies (and after more sections collapsed) it was determined that any further activity in the Church Hill Tunnel was simply too dangerous. The next year the entrances of the tunnel were sealed off, with a giant “1926” inscribed on the mossy, wet stone covering the western entrance. The train and bodies remained entombed inside.

Over the decades since the collapse the tunnel has continued to cause problems, in 1962 another collapse swallowed a house and another worker lost their life to the tunnel. There have been multiple plans to recover the train and the bodies, but the continuing collapses and state of utter disrepair halted further efforts. In 2006 the Virginia Historical Society proposed trying to get into the tunnel once again, but upon drilling a hole in the seal and peering at the inside with a camera it became clear that it would not be possible. The tunnel is filled with water and sand and manipulating it in any way could result in further collapses and severe damage to homes currently standing on Church Hill. Any recovery plans are indefinitely on hold.

Plans for recovery of the train and the bodies of those still entombed inside the Church Hill Tunnel is not the only thing that brings the collapse into present-day conversation. Then there is the vampire.

When twenty-eight-year old Benjamin F. Mosby staggered out of the east end of the tunnel he was the picture of pain and suffering. His teeth were broken, he was bloody, and according to people at the scene his flesh was hanging in ribbons, torn from his body after being blasted by the scalding steam from the locomotive. As the stories of the collapse spread one stated that a “creature” covered in blood and with a mouth of sharp teeth ran from the tunnel, eventually making it to the nearby Hollywood Cemetery where it disappeared into the mausoleum of W.W. Pool, a striking structure with a metal gate and an inscription only reading “W.W. Pool 1913.”

Article in the Richmond Times Dispatch about a tribute to Mosby after his death.

This “creature” which has become known as the Richmond Vampire, is a popular story, but the background is a messy jigsaw of events, rumors, and innocent people denied their eternal resting place. It is almost certain that the figure described as bloody and ghastly with a mouth of sharp teeth emerging from the tunnel was Mosby, moving away from the horror in a state of shock before other people at the scene lay him down on an embankment and began to pour water on him to try and soothe some of his pain. He was reportedly calm, asking that someone let his wife know he was alive and ok. As for the connection to the final resting place of W.W. Pool, there is a rumor that Pool found himself in the United States after being run out of England for practicing vampirism. This rumor is purely that. Pool was born in Mississippi in the 1840s, moved to the Richmond region in the 1860s, died in 1922 (on the same day as one of his closest friends) and had an elaborate funeral including Masonic rites given his membership to the Freemasons. So is the origin of the Richmond Vampire a case of tragic proximity? There are the accounts of seeing a creature emerging from the tunnel and the rumor of Pool and vampirism but the two became intertwined over time, carried into the future by word of mouth and sensationalist storytelling. It is a story of wildly convoluted origins, but it is a persistent one. Visitors to the Hollywood Cemetery regularly ask if there is a vampire buried there and more disturbingly, the remains of W.W. Pool and his wife were removed from the mausoleum due to vandals breaking in, drawing symbols on the walls, and allegedly trying to steal parts of their bodies.

Hundreds of people visit the Hollywood Cemetery of Richmond looking for the tomb of a monster, the physical remains of a real-life horror story. The true tale of terror though, can be found three miles away where a large stone wall inscribed with only “1926” stands between the visitor and a tragic scene where a train and at least two bodies lay frozen in the moment when the earth caved in and took their last breath from them.

The sealed western entrance of the Church Hill Tunnel. Image via Eli Christman from Richmond, VA, USA, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Sources:

Branch, Ashley. “Starting with the Church Hill Tunnel Collapse, a Filmmaker Is Uncovering Virginia’s Buried History.” VPM, Virginia’s home for Public Media, 30 Sept. 2021, www.vpm.org/2021-09-30/starting-with-the-church-hill-tunnel-collapse-a-filmmaker-is-uncovering-virginias.

Castleton, David. “The Richmond Vampire - Virginia’s Tunnel-Haunting Nosferatu - David Castleton Blog - the Serpent’s Pen.” David Castleton Blog - the Serpent’s Pen, 21 Apr. 2021, www.davidcastleton.net/richmond-vampire-hollywood-cemetery-w-w-pool-church-hill-tunnel-virginia/.

Feather, Lauren. “This Richmond Park Is Home to a Sealed Tunnel (with an Unusual History).” TheTravel, 10 Dec. 2022, www.thetravel.com/church-hill-tunnel-in-richmond-virginia-history/.

Nestled into the southwestern region of Vermont lies an expanse of wilderness stretching approximately 100 square miles. Thick with forest and natural wonders including the Glastenbury Mountain this region, roughly bordered by the towns of Glastenbury, Woodford, and Bennington, has deep rooted history including the first town created in Vermont and significant chapters in the American Revolution. It is scenic, it is historic, and to many it’s also terrifying.

 The chilling stories of Glastenbury Mountain began centuries ago when the Native American population regarded the space as sacred, but also cursed. Being the place “where the four winds meet” they used the area only for the burial of their dead and warned people not to travel the region. They also told the tale of a large and malicious stone that would swallow up anyone who stood on it.  If a curse placed by nature, a revered-but-feared burial ground, and a rock that could consume a human was not enough, there were also the tales of the wild men, large hairy human-like creatures that roamed the dense woods alongside other beasts.

Postcard showing Glastenbury Mountain. Image via legendsofamerica.com.

These tales were known but in the decades after the Civil War the old warnings faded and people now living in the region looked to transform their town. In 1872 the town began its first metamorphosis, becoming a logging community fed by the ample and seemingly endless supply of lumber surrounding them.  A train line was built extending nine miles to Bennington and three coal kilns supplied coal that would be shipped down the mountain on the rails. The operations were a success and by 1880 the little town had a school, post office, and a population of 241 people. It looked promising but in the 1890s a black cloud seemed to take a firm residency over the region.

The first strike came on April 4th 1892 when Glastenbury residents Henry McDowell and John Crowley had a confrontation. It is unknown what words were exchanged, but McDowell felt they were strong enough to warrant grabbing a rock and bludgeoning Crowley to death before escaping into the woods. He was eventually caught in Connecticut, convicted, and sent to Waterbury State Hospital. After some time though, the guards felt he could be trusted to spend some time out in the yard. Once outside he saw his moment and hid in a coal cart before making his escape. He was never seen again. Five years later in October 1897 John Harbour of nearby Woodford was found dead, killed by a single gunshot wound. His killer was never found.

It was in that same year that Glastenbury came face to face with a big problem. They were a lumber town, but they were running out of trees to cut. Given that they already had cleared land, created pathways, and had a number of silent buildings from the now-extinct lumber industry, they decided to take an entirely different turn and transform the area into a resort town with a trolley, hotel, and casino. The hopes were high, but after one season the dreams were decimated when massive flooding ravaged the town. With no trees or root systems to help alleviate the impact of the water, it ran over with nothing in its path, destroying the railways leading to the resort that was going to save the town. The flood was the death blow to Glastenbury and with seemingly no other option, the residents moved on leaving the town nearly abandoned with less than ten residents remaining. This low population was one of the reasons that in 1937 the town was disincorporated, putting it in place to officially become a ghost town.

Image showing the repurposed buildings and trolley meant to transform Glastenbury. Image via obscurevermont.com.

The region sat quietly while the wilderness reclaimed it, largely remaining out of the public eye until November 12th 1945 when it became the focus of search parties and newspaper headlines. The man they were searching for was Middie Rivers, an outdoorsman who had become closely acquainted with these woods in his almost seventy-five years. An avid hunter and fisherman, Rivers was spending the day hunting with a small party including his son-in-law. While the group was stopped near Bickford Hollow, Rivers decided to move ahead of the party. By the time the clock struck 4pm he had not returned, and the concerned hunting party went out to find him. When the group saw no sign of Rivers they traveled down to Bennington and asked Fire Chief Wallace Mattison to help them search. The search went on for days and grew to include hundreds of people and soldiers from Fort Devens in Massachusetts. Hours marched on, the sun rose and set multiple times, and the hope that Rivers was fine out in the woods that he knew so well and that he would just show back up one day quickly faded when the snow began to fall. Rivers was never found and the only thing ever recovered was a single rifle cartridge from his gun.

The tragic disappearance of Middie Rivers might have slipped away into time, but instead it unfortunately became “the first one.” 

In December 1946 eighteen-year-old Paula Jean Welden was a sophomore at Bennington College where she studied art, had an interest in botany, and worked at the college cafeteria. After her shift on December 1st she told her roommate she was going to do some hiking on the Long Trail, a 272-mile footpath that follows Vermont’s Green Mountains up to the border of Canada. She was dressed in sneakers, blue jeans, and a red parka, clothing that was fine for that afternoon but would offer no protection for the kind of cold that settled in after dark. She left just before 3pm and she was seen several times that afternoon. One owner of a gas station claims he saw a woman matching her description near a gravel pit, she began hitchhiking and was picked up by a local contractor who took her as far as his house which was about 2.5 miles from the beginning of the Long Trail. Once she began walking on the trail she encountered a group of hikers who answered some questions she had before they moved on in the opposite direction of Welden. According to some reports a local man named Ernest Whitman may have had one of the last encounters with Welden when she stopped to speak to him at his cabin. She asked how long she could go on the trail and he informed her it was four miles to a fork. He warned her that she was not dressed for the weather but she went on her way anyway.

When Welden’s roommate didn’t see her return that night she was not worried, she assumed she was just in another part of the college or in the library studying late. But, when she realized the next morning that Welden was still gone she went to the faculty. The president of the college called her parents in Connecticut and asked if their daughter was home with them. She was not. And when Welden’s mother was informed her daughter was also not at school she fainted on the spot.

Missing person flyer used for Paula Welden. Image via wikipedia.com.

The search for Paula Welden had one huge roadblock from the start, the structure of the search itself. At the time of her disappearance Vermont did not have its own state police force so the search was assembled and conducted by the president of Bennington College and Welden’s father. A group of 370 students and faculty went out to search for her, splitting into groups and throwing confetti on areas that were already searched so other groups knew that that area had already been looked at. In time both the Connecticut and New York state police were brought in to assist and a reward of $5,000 was offered. It was no use, no trace of Paula Welden was ever found.

Image used in the search of Paula Welden. Image via wikipedia.com.

It is easy to say that both Middie Rivers and Paula Welden were probably unfortunate victims of the elements in the wooded expanse that includes Bennington and Glastenbury, but the story of James Tedford is much more difficult to explain away.

It was late into 1949 and James Tedford was supposed to be back home, but he was not. The sixty-eight-year-old World War II veteran had been spending some time visiting his wife and family in Fraklin, Vermont before boarding a bus in St. Albans to return back home to the Vermont Soldiers’ Home where he lived in Bennington.

Along the way back there was a stop in Burlington where Tedford ran into an old friend and the pair chatted a bit before he once again boarded the bus on the final stretch of his ride home. When the bus stopped back in Bennington it was discovered that the veteran was nowhere to be found. His last known whereabouts was on the bus on December 1st at approximately 4pm, almost exactly three years after the last known sighting of Paula Welden in the same region. There was no question that Tedford boarded the bus, not only was he seen getting back on but his suitcase, unfolded map, and unchecked bus ticket were still sitting on his seat. He was simply gone. Shockingly, it took days for anyone to put the pieces together that Tedford never returned home and a search for the man did not take place for over a week after he was last seen. No trace of James Tedford was ever found.

Newspaper clipping about the disappearance of James Tedford. Image via vermontdailychronicle.com.

The disappearances already seen in the region were unsettling but with the end of 1950 came a string of incidents that made some people genuinely begin to question what was going on in the wilderness around Glastenbury Mountain. The first took place on October 12th 1950 when eight-year-old Paul Jepson went missing under some eerily similar circumstances. The eight-year-old was out with his mother, some report that he was with her at the local dump that they maintained, and others state he was helping her tend to the pigs near their Glastenbury farmhouse. Allegedly he was in the family pickup truck and his mother walked away to do some work before returning to the truck and finding the child missing. Like Welden he was also wearing red and his time of disappearance was between 3 and 4pm, approximately the same timeframe that Fisher, Welden, and Tedford also all vanished. A search was launched for Jepson and hundreds of people from the local region combed through the dump, the town, and went into the mountains with no success. Bloodhounds were brought in from the New Hampshire State Police and they did pick up the scent of the boy, but it was lost at an intersection near where Welden was last seen. In the days and weeks that followed Jepson’s disappearance there were reports of motorists seeing a young boy walking along a road but subsequent searches came up empty. Paul Jepson was never seen again.

Newspaper clipping about the disappearance of Paul Jepson. Image via vermontdailychronicle.com.

With the disappearance of Jepson still fresh in the minds of the locals, they very quickly found themselves facing a growingly familiar story when two weeks later on October 28th fifty-three-year-old Freida Langer also walked into the woods and seemingly vanished. Like Middie Fisher, Langer was extremely familiar with the woods so there was nothing to be concerned about when she left her family’s camp cabin for a hike with her cousin. During their walk Langer fell into a stream near the Somerset Reservoir and rather than continue on in her wet clothes she decided to walk the half mile back to the camp where she and her husband had spent every weekend for the last decade, change clothes, and meet her cousin back in the woods to resume their walk. When Langer did not return the concerned cousin went back to the family campsite and was horrified to learn that Langer had never even made it back the half mile to change her clothes. Once again a search was launched, and once again there was no sign of Langer. But, unlike all the previous disappearances, the Langer case would have closure.

Nearly six months after Langer walked into the woods two fishermen were out on the Deerfield River when they made the gruesome discovery of human remains. They had been out that morning but were not having any luck where they were so they decided to move downstream in hopes to find more fish, instead as they moved through the water something caught their eye under the grass hanging over a large water-filled hole at the bank of the river. Langer’s body was found three miles from where she left to walk back to her cabin and it took the pair of fishermen nearly three hours to hike the three miles through intensely thick forest to Somerset Road where they hitchhiked to a home to call for help. The body was badly decomposed but there was no question that the remains were Langer, on the skull was a metal plate, the result of brain surgery that she had five years earlier. It was the surgery that led to the official conclusion that Langer must have suffered a seizure, fallen in the water, and died of accidental drowning. How the experienced hiker who was so well versed in the woods ended up two and a half miles away from her familiar destination remained unknown.

Image of Freida Langer. Image via legendsofamerica.com.

Before 1950 came to a close there was one more name that would join the unfortunate ranks of souls last seen in the wilderness of southwestern Vermont. On November 29th 1950 sixteen-year-old Martha Jeanette Jones was reported missing by her parents. But, at the time she was reported gone Jones had already been missing for an entire month. She was last known to be hitchhiking to school in Manchester and traveling through the infamous region when she too disappeared. The school was under the impression that she was home while her parents assumed she was at the school. Like so many others, Jones was never seen or heard from again.

With the number of mysterious occurrences in the Glastenbury-Bennington region there are bound to be theories about what happened to the missing. There are purely logical ones, Langer may have had a seizure and drowned, the young Paul Jepson or Paula Welden may have been kidnapped, James Tedford may have decided he no longer wanted to live at the Vermont Soldiers’ Home and silently left the bus with no one noticing, one of more of the missing may have simply succumbed to the ruthless wilderness and elements. There are these theories, and there are others that believe that there is something very abnormal going on in the woods of southwestern Vermont.

The stories go back to the Native American tales of the land being cursed and a human-swallowing rock, but there was something else they spoke of, that being the “wild men” of the woods. The idea of large, hairy creatures roaming the woods is easy to dismiss as Native American legend, but there is an account of many others seeing a similar creature in the late 1800s. According to the story a stagecoach full of people were traveling through the mountains near Glastenbury during a torrential downpour that made progress nearly impossible. The stagecoach driver came to a halt and when he climbed down with lantern in hand he noticed a large set of footprints in the mud in front of them. The tale continues that people started to come out of the stagecoach to look at the footprints when the horses began to get extremely restless. Then, something hit the stagecoach with tremendous force and everyone inside scrambled out. According to their accounts whatever was hitting the coach finally hit it with a blow strong enough to knock it on its side and through the pelting rain they saw a massive human shape, covered with hair, and two huge eyes in the darkness that turned and ran back into the woods.

The creature dubbed The Bennington Monster became yet another mystery of the region, but it was looked at a little stronger in November 1943. Before the “first” disappearance of Middie Fisher in November 1945 there was the story of Carol Herrick. Herrick was also an outdoorsman and an avid hunter who went out hunting one day with his cousin Henry. Allegedly, the two men got separated and Henry contacted authorities to try and find his cousin. Carol Herrick was found days later laying near his gun that had not been fired. The cause of death was equally confusing and disturbing, it was said that his lungs were punctured by his ribs and it appeared that he had been “squeezed” to death.

Since its earliest days the forests of southwestern Vermont have been surrounded by unsettling stories. The Native American tales of the land being cursed, man-eating rocks, and wild men live in the collective memory alongside tales of beasts attacking stagecoaches, inexplicable sounds coming from the woods, and even reports of mysterious lights and flying objects being seen over the treetops. It is the disappearances though that earned the region the name “The Bennington Triangle”, coined by author Joseph Citro in 1992. When it comes to The Bennington Triangle the years between 1945 and 1950 will forever be synonymous with the disappearances of Middie Rivers, Paula Welden, James Tedford, Paul Jepson, Freida Langer, and Martha Jeanette Jones, but these names reflect only a small sliver of the strange occurrences in the woods.

The terrifying truth is that we may never fully know the extent of the unexplained that already has, and continues to unfold, in the region of The Bennington Triangle of Vermont.

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Sources:

Abramovich, Chad. “The Vanished Town of Glastenbury and the Bennington Triangle.” Obscure Vermont, 31 Mar. 2020, urbanpostmortem.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/the-vanished-town-of-glastenbury-and-the-bennington-triangle/.

Alexander, Kathy. “Bennington Triangle, Vermont.” Legends of America, Oct. 2023, www.legendsofamerica.com/bennington-triangle-vermont/.

Dailey, Eva. “The Bennington Triangle: The Ghost Town of Glastenbury Vermont.” The Looking Glass, 17 Oct. 2018, svclookingglass.com/4299/art/writing/the-bennington-triangle-the-ghost-town-of-glastenbury-vermont/.

Fair, Bethany. “History Space: Tale of Two VT Ghost Towns.” Burlington Free Press, 29 Oct. 2018, www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/news/2018/10/29/history-space-tale-two-vt-ghost-towns/38202243/.

Leahey, Maynard. “Verdict of Accidental Drowning Closes Freida Langer Mystery.” The North Adams Transcript, May 14th 1951, https://www.newspapers.com/image/545381347/?terms=%22Frieda%20Langer%22&match=1

“Missing Jepson Youngster Makes Fourth Disappearance of Local Persons in 5 Years” The Bennington Evening Banner, October 24th 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/546025887/ 

“Missing Schoolgirl, 16, Brings To 6 Numbers of Persons Lost in Southern Vt.” The Burlington Free Press, December 13th 1950, https://www.newspapers.com/image/198069883/?terms=%22Paul%20Jepson%22&match=1

Page, Timothy. “Secrets of the Bennington Triangle - Vermont Daily Chronicle.” Vermont Daily Chronicle - News & Commentary for Vermont, 29 Sept. 2023, vermontdailychronicle.com/secrets-of-the-bennington-triangle/.

“74 Year Old Hunter Lost For Two Days.” The Bennington Evening Banner, November 14th 1945, https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/files/original/Michael_C._Dooling_Collection_MS_062/5262/ms062_01_18_middieRivers.pdf

From early on Leonarda’s life was filled with tragedy and deep pools of darkness, but by the time she was forty-five years old it may have appeared like the bad years were behind her. According to all outward appearances she had four children that she adored, her family was freshly settled into a new home, she opened a small shop that proved to be successful, and she found friends in her neighbors. It seemed like there was very little to dislike about Leonarda. After all, she was friendly, generous, wise, and she was known to lend a helping hand to people chasing their dreams that reached far outside their town of Correggio. And then there were her baking. Her treats were enjoyed by many, but only because no one knew the truth about them.

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Read the rest of the story in Hushed Up History Volume I, available now through Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com!  

When the Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York claimed they contacted the spirit of a murdered peddler in 1848 the ears of the entire country listened. Suddenly there was hope that those who passed away were not truly gone and people from all over began to scramble to find ways to communicate with the dead. Later, with the horrors of the Civil War tearing the country and families apart people looked to Spiritualism and any way possible to find answers from beyond. Hundreds of thousands never came home, countless numbers were never found and the need for closure and communication drove people into the parlors and palms of people claiming they could be their much-needed bridge to the other side.  As many people that believed in life after death, there were just as many who refuted it and the divide grew. As time moved on the division deepened with both sides seeking the ultimate proof that death was, or was not, the end. It is an argument that is still actively debated to this day.

Prof. Thomas Lynn Bradford was a man of many ventures. A one-time electrical engineer, athlete, and actor, by 1920 he had begun studying and lecturing about the occult with a particular focus on the afterlife. The world had now suffered through World War I and people’s spirituality was again feeling highly tested. Bradford was a man of sound mind, but his headspace became more and more filled with his thoughts on life after death and how to prove it. He wrote “…all phenomena are outside the domain of the supernatural." He wanted to prove his theories using scientific fact, but he knew he could not do it alone.

Professor Thomas Lynn Bradford.

In the early part of 1921 Bradford placed an ad in a local Detroit newspaper under the name “Professor Flynn” and stated that he was seeking “someone interested in spiritualistic science.” It was a strange ad, which was exactly why it caught the attention of prominent Detroit native Ruth Starkweather Doran. Doran was not a firm believer in Spiritualism. But, she was an avid researcher and was intrigued with the opportunity to learn about a field so unfamiliar to her. On a whim, she responded to the ad and before long she and Bradford began meeting face to face.

The experiment Bradford presented to Doran would have sent most people running, but for reasons unknown, she stuck with the plan. Before their last meeting on February 5th 1921 Bradford finished typing his latest manuscript and laid it neatly next to his typewriter. There was much to do and once Doran arrived the details were ironed out about how he would contact her when his half of the experiment was complete and how they would then reunite. The deal was made. They bid each other farewell and Bradford shut the door of his rented room. He knew he would not be disturbed, he already informed his landlord, a Mr. Marcotte, that if anyone were to call for him to tell them he was out and would not be back until very late. He turned on his heater. blew out the pilot light, turned up the gas, and laid down in bed until the fumes took his life.

The fact that Bradford killed himself in pursuit of answers about life after death may not have come as a shock to some of his friends. It was later reported that the occult interested him more than anything in the physical world. At one point he told Mr. Marcotte, “When I die my body goes to science. It is to be sent to the Michigan Medical Institute. Anyhow, my body does not amount to much.”

When Bradford’s body was discovered by Marcotte the next day the gas was still pouring from his heater. Upon investigation police found his typewriter, with one final note never removed, “And it is through scientific facts that I propose to demonstrate clearly the phenomena of spirits and prove that all the phenomena is outside the domain of super-natural.” Baffled by the suicide, the Detroit Police Department began to look for an explanation, and the dots quickly led to Doran who escaped any legal action by claiming they had met and discussed proving the afterlife but that she did not know he was planning to kill himself that night. Now, with his lifeless body laying in his home the first part of Bradford’s plan was complete. The second part relied on reconnecting with Doran to prove there was life after death. The self-proclaimed skeptic agreed to go through with it. “I am his friend.” Doran said, “If he can cause his spirit to come back to earth I believe his spirit will come to me first.”

Newspaper headline about Bradford’s suicide.

In the days following Bradford’s suicide the eyes of the Spiritualism world were firmly fixed on Doran’s parlor where she was hosting multiple vigils waiting for her friend to reach out and make contact. Throughout the entire process though, Doran made it a point that she was not a psychic, saying that she was simply a human being there to serve as a middleman and prove Bradford’s theories. She and the intrigued masses patiently waited night after night for a connection, but the hours moved on quietly with Doran only stating at one point that she felt a “strange sensation”.

Doran and the spiritualists were not the only one wanting to hear from Bradford. Multiple newspapers waited eagerly for word, running headlines updating the masses with the New York Times reporting, “Dead Spiritualist Silent” two days after the suicide. It was a few days into a planned two week long vigil that there was finally something to report, but it was not from Doran. A woman named Lulu Mack came forward stating that during a visit with a medium she heard a voice calling the name “Thomas Bradford”, a name she claimed was totally unfamiliar to her at the time. She told reporters that Bradford could not communicate very well because his suicide made him weak, suspending him before he could fully pass on to the next realm. “Life has fled from the body of Thomas Lynn Bradford but his spirit is hovering near and calling to us to hear its message,” Mack reported. “I have heard the call of his spirit. It is calling to me even now. But I cannot hear the message it would send, because the spirit is too weak.”

Headline from The New York Times, February 18, 1921. 

Headline from  The Pittsburgh Press, February 10, 1921.

Suddenly, a week after Bradford took his own life, Doran claimed she had a feeling she was going to hear from him, but it would be difficult considering how weak he was. Papers, thirsty for the next part of their bizarre story, urged spiritualists to concentrate on Bradford and “assist” him in reaching out. To make sure it was a focused effort it was agreed that 9pm was the time to take action and focus to help Bradford and Doran reconnect.

Much to the delight of some and criticism of others, at 9pm that night Doran sat in her darkened parlor with three witnesses. Suddenly, she put her hands to her temples, commanded the lights be turned off, and told someone to start writing. According to her, Bradford had finally arrived. “I hear his voice” she said to the room, “It is faint, but it grows more distinct. It is the professor.”

As Doran spoke in broken fragments the alleged message from Bradford was slowly pieced together:

“I am the professor who speaks to you from the Beyond. I have broken through the veil. The help of the living has greatly assisted me. I simply went to sleep. I woke up and at first did not realize that I had passed on. I find no great change apparent. I expected things to be much different. They are not. Human forms are retained in outline but not in the physical. I have not traveled far. I am still much in the darkness. I see many people. They appear natural. There is a lightness of responsibility here unlike in life. One feels full of rapture and happiness. Persons of like natures associate. I am associated with other investigators. I do not repent my act. My present plane is but the first series. I am still investigating the future planes regarding which we in this plane are as ignorant as are earthly beings of the life just beyond human life.”

At 10pm the lights were brought back on and a flustered Doran looked over the bits and pieces that she claimed were given to her directly from the spirit of Bradford. Then, she suddenly fainted. Once resuscitated one of the witnesses asked her if she was positive about her message, was she absolutely sure she was speaking with Bradford from beyond the grave? She was adamant, “I am convinced. I never heard a spirit voice before. That was the professor, without doubt."

Illustration from  The Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 21, 1921.

For all of the speculation and attention leading up to Doran waiting to hear from Bradford, the aftermath was remarkably tame. Despite the accounts from both Doran and Mack, members of both the Spiritualism community and the general public were not convinced that the alleged message from Bradford was proof of anything. The headlines faded into obscurity and Doran went along with them. Later in the year Doran wrote an article claiming that she maintained regular communication with her departed friend ever since. She was now a believer, still receiving messages from Bradford detailing how one day both realms would meet.

“Through spiritualism the world will be reclaimed: sin will be vanquished, suffering will end” she claimed he told her. “The physical in man will cease to be, and physical death, and that is the only death, will be no more. Men will live on earth forever, even as they live forever in the spirit world.”

At the time of his death Bradford was near penniless. His estranged wife living in Wisconsin only learned of his death later and his body was claimed by a brother, James Bradford, who handed it over to an undertaker for interment.

Just southwest of Hummelstown, Pennsylvania is a place carved by nature and visited by humans for hundreds of years. The caves have had many names, Wilson Cave, Hummelstown Cave, Stoverdale Cave, Giant’s Cave, Indian Cave, and the most recent moniker, Indian Echo Caverns. Since 1929 the caves have been open to the public with tours regularly walking through and marveling at the natural wonders. Hundreds of thousands of people walk the cavern paths each year, but what some may not know is that one corner of the caves houses a story of betrayal, desperation, exile, and death.

The Indian Echo Caverns. Image via Wikipedia.

William “Amos” and Elizabeth Wilson (also known as Harriet) were siblings born in Lebanon, Pennsylvania in the late 1700s. The pair were born two years apart but they were extremely close, remaining in contact as much as possible after William left home at sixteen to become an apprentice stone cutter. When Elizabeth later left home at the age of eighteen she journeyed to Philadelphia where part of her path becomes murky. Some say that she became a servant in the home of a wealthy family, others say she found work at the Indian Queen Tavern. What is known for certain is that during her time in Philadelphia her tragic fate was sealed. Elizabeth met a young man by the name of Smith and by 1784 she had at least one child with him, many accounts reporting that she had twins. The problem was that Smith was already married and had no intention of continuing his life with Elizabeth or the children. In October 1784 Elizabeth went missing for several days. When she returned the children were gone and Elizabeth was unable to speak.

Within days the horrific fate of her infants was revealed when their bodies were found in the woods by a hunter. With the discovery came the accusations, all of which were sharply pointed toward Elizabeth. The authorities acted quickly, arresting Elizabeth and committing her to prison to await trial for the murder of her babies. When the day arrived for the young woman to face a judge the courtroom was bursting at the seams with many people who knew Elizabeth well and could not believe, refused to believe, that she was capable of the accusations before her. The numbers did not sway anything in her favor and after eleven hours the judge handed down the ultimate sentence. Elizabeth Wilson would hang on December 7th 1785.

Far from the fury and horror of the courthouse, William did not learn of the accusations against his sister until after her sentencing was handed down. Arriving at the jail on December 3rd, William was finally able to convince Elizabeth to speak and her words revealed what he believed to be the true story. According to William, Elizabeth told him that on that horrible October day Smith contacted her, asked her to meet him, and told her to bring the children along. While walking through the woods en route to their meeting he surprised Elizabeth, killed the babies and then attacked her, telling her that if she ever spoke of the incident he would kill her as well. The shock of the ordeal plunged her into a severe state of trauma rendering her unable to speak and therefor unable to defend herself against any accusation in court. William knew his sister, he believed his sister, and now he took it upon himself to set her free.

William had only four days to save Elizabeth’s life. Riding from town to town, he began voraciously gathering information, talking to witnesses and judges, and building the case for her innocence. He finally made his way to the Commonwealth’s executive authority, the Supreme Executive Council, and plead his case for a pardon for Elizabeth. Here William was partially successful, gaining the support of Council Vice-President Charles Biddle. Biddle felt certain about  Elizabeth’s innocence and the rest of the Council, although not as convinced as Biddle, decided to grant a stay of execution to allow William to further build his case. The execution was rescheduled for January 3rd 1786 and for the Wilson siblings the clock began counting down.

Charles Biddle.

William continued his pursuit of information and some accounts say that he tracked down Smith who claimed he never even met Elizabeth. It didn’t matter, William had witnesses connecting him to Elizabeth and he was prepared to bring their names to the Council. William may have felt he won the fight, but before he could deliver the new information an illness derailed him just before Christmas. William recovered but his deadline loomed dangerously close, it was now the day before Elizabeth was scheduled to hang.

With only hours left William arrived at the home of the Supreme Executive Council President, Benjamin Franklin. Franklin directed him to the home of Biddle and believing fully that Elizabeth would be pardoned with just a little more time, Biddle wrote another stay of execution, “Do not execute Wilson until you hear further from Council.” William had fifteen miles between him and the execution site in Chester, Pennsylvania. He jumped on his horse and rode.

The ride to Chester was hindered by everything imaginable. A violent storm thrashed all around William and when he arrived at the Schuylkill River he was faced with a tragic set of circumstance. The storm had already destroyed the bridges, ferry boats were not running, and the river tossed in front of him with no way to cross. After pacing the riverbank for a time he made his move, attempting to cross on horseback, but the horse could not complete the crossing. He finally threw himself into the freezing water, swimming across with the stay of execution in hand. William made it across, found another horse, and raced toward the jail, but it was too late. When he arrived at the execution site his sister was hanging from the gallows. Realizing what his appearance meant and seeing the stay of execution her body was cut down by the sheriff and they attempted to revive her but Elizabeth was gone, dying only minutes before William’s arrival with the paper that would have saved her life.  

An illustration showing the arrival of William at the execution site. The word appearing above his head reads “A Pardon”.

The murder of her children stunned Elizabeth into temporary silence but the death of Elizabeth completely rocked William to his core. For months he remained in a state of semi-delirium, unable to reconcile in his mind the many strikes that pushed his sister to her death only moments before he could have saved her. When he recovered from the shock William declared that he no longer had any interest in the outside world. He wandered the region in solitude until he found a cave hidden inside a forest twelve miles from Hummelstown, Pennsylvania.

William made the caverns his home for nineteen years, creating a living space out of one room where he kept a table, a stool, a few utensils, and a bed of straw gathered on a ledge ten feet from the ground that he accessed with a simple ladder. Among his few possessions he kept a copy of the Bible which he studied from in between his regular morning and evening church services. For the remainder of his life he was a mostly solitary man deeply committed to cleanliness, reading, and writing. He was a prolific writer, penning many pieces but never sharing them with anyone, intending for them to be published only after his death. He claimed he was content with his life, never desiring to be involved with the world and people around him. The death of his sister gave him “a wound which they can never heal.”

The ledge where William slept. Image via flickr user Sherrie.

One of the few people to encounter William on a semi-regular basis was a farmer who paid him to do odd jobs and to carve millstones. On October 13th 1821 William did not show up to the farm so the farmer went looking for him. When he arrived at the cave he found the remnants of a fire, one of the many William regularly lit under his stone ledge to keep warm in the chilly cave. Laying in the straw was a lifeless William, likely taken by smoke inhalation.

According to reports, William was buried in an unmarked grave on the farmer’s property. It was only after his death that the farmer learned his friend’s story after finding numerous writings and William’s journal detailing the tragic tale of his sister. Among his many writings was a manuscript entitled The Sweets of Solitude: Instructions to Mankind How They May Be Happy in a Miserable World, published posthumously as William intended.

An illustration of The Pennsylvania Hermit.

Today a visit to the Indian Echo Caves costs less than twenty dollars and promises a breathtaking look into the natural hidden wonders of Pennsylvania. Reviews include words like “pleasant”, “beautiful”, and “wonderful”, all well deserved praises. Less easy to find among the guest comments is the tragic tale of William Wilson, “The Pennsylvania Hermit” who was minutes from saving one life and spent nineteen years of his own living in the caves with only his memories, his regrets, and a “wound” the outside world could “never heal.”

The house was cold and dark, the flicker of candlelight casting eerie shadows on the stone walls. Charlotte, trembling and pale, gripped the edge of the table as pain wracked her body, her breath shallow and ragged. Beside her, her younger Isabella—usually wild and reckless—was quiet, her hands gentle as she wiped Charlotte’s brow.

In a world broken by war, where hope seemed a distant memory, Charlotte now faced her greatest battle: giving birth. Every contraction felt like fire tearing through her, the weight of the war pressing down as her body fought to bring new life into this shattered world.

But would she have the strength to survive?

Stay tuned for Chapter 5 of Whispers of the Nightingale, where amidst the ravages of war, Charlotte's struggle to bring her child into the world becomes a fight for her very soul.