In 1897, on the corner of a building at the southeast corner of Geary Street and Grant Avenue, San Francisco the ghost of a missing man stalked the halls.
Windsor A. Keefer (Kiefer), the principal owner in the Jupiter Mine in Calaveras County went missing March 17, 1897.
He was last seen when he left to visit the mines in company of Mr. Thompson president of the mining company. They went hunting, and separated some time during the day.
To all appearances Dolly and Fred Oesterrech were a dull, average couple who owned a factory. Little did anyone expect the scandal that would soon break loose that included allegations of murder and illicit sex.
Captain Meriwether Lewis was born into fortunate circumstances in 1774. He is best known for his expedition to the Pacific along with his friend William Clark. He was a diplomat, explorer, friend of the President and the governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory. The man who only three years before had survived a dangerous trek over the wilds of the Rocky Mountains, died of gunshot wounds at the age of 35. Many thought it was suicide, but from the beginning there have been whispers of murder.
In June 1934 in Brighton, England a steamer trunk was found in King's Cross railway station. It contained a woman's torso and legs. The arms and head were missing. Scotland Yard reached out to the public in trying to identify the victim. In the United States, Agnes C. Tufverson, 43, had married a former Czech officer six months before. She disappeared, and the last heard from her was when she visited London. Her family wondered if it was her body that had been found.
Mardi Gras is strongly associated with wild bacchanalia and debauchery, and many took to heart, and beyond. Fat Tuesday, is a long-standing tradition of the Catholic Church and it marks the last day of before the start of Lent, a time of fasting and repentance. The celebration of Mardi Gras has its roots in the pagan Roman celebration of Lupercalia. This was a February holiday and it honored the Roman god of fertility. It involved feasting, drinking, and carnal behavior. Marlene and Henry retell stories of Mardi Gras past, and of strange cults where there was no intention of repentance of any kind.
In 1799, a young woman named Gulielma "Elma" Sands was killed. Her reputation was shredded during her murder trial, however no one was ever punished for the deed. Most of those surrounding the incident, who perhaps cheated her of justice, suffered a series of misfortunes in the years that followed.
Stories of the Supernatural explores a long used crossroads in Central Florida known as Yeehaw Junction, where for over a 100 years, gunfights, murder, suicides and sightings of ghosts are just the beginning of the supernatural events that have been witnessed by travelers where these two roads meet. | Host - Marlene Pardo Pellicer
A young and pretty farm girl named Pearl Bryan was murdered in 1896. Her headless corpse was found in an orchard, and the trial of her accused killers made headlines across the country however, Pearl's name is so well known in modern times, because it is her spirit that is said to haunt Bobby Mackey's Music World. | Host – M.P. Pellicer
Amelia Earhart disappeared July 2, 1937, on the last leg of a trans-world flight. Two years after their disappearance, Earhart and her navigator were declared dead. For all this time her fate has remained a mystery. Every few years someone claims to have found Amelia or her plane, but definitive proof has never been provided.
In 1938, a lighthouse on Howland Island was named for the aviatrix. This was the place where she was supposed to refuel before ending her travels after leaving Lae, New Guinea, however even though her radio transmission was heard by those on the island, she and her navigator Fred Noonan never arrived. The message heard was: "We must be on you but cannot see you — but gas is running low — have been unable to reach you by radio — we are flying at 1,000 feet."
Three boys were playing near an old mill pond on the outskirts of Crisfield, Maryland. An old man arrived carrying two bundles. He told the boys the sacks contained either puppies or kittens, which he meant to drown. After the man threw the sacks into the water and left, they retrieved one of the bags intent on saving the animals only to make a gruesome discovery.
Inside the bag was the headless bodies of two children, and just the head of an older child. One of the victims was perhaps 6 to 7 years of age, while the others were from a week to 6 months old.
A few days before Christmas 1900, a twelve-year-old girl named Inez came home from school on Friday afternoon. She told her younger brother she was going inside for a moment, and when she failed to return he went to search for her; he saw something reflected in the mirror that faced the open closet that sent him screaming from the room.
What Otto Gibson saw reflected in the mirror of his sister's bedroom was her body hanging inside the closet. Her jump rope was tied around her neck. A servant girl who came upstairs ran to a neighbor's house for help, but when they arrived it was too late.
In 1903, Colonel Barog, a British engineer made a mistake in the building of Tunnel No. 33 on the Kalka-Shimla train route. Subsequently he was fined for wasting government money and publicly reprimanded, which humiliated him deeply. He rode his horse to the dark entrance of the unfinished tunnel, and shot himself in sheer desperation near what now is the state government-run Barog Pine Wood Hotel. He has never left the place since.
He was buried in front of the tunnel, and a signboard giving details about the sad end of Colonel Barog was put up near his grave, but that too has now disappeared. As a result, it is now even difficult to locate the whereabouts of his grave. Sightings of the engineer riding his horse from one end to the other, started almost immediately after his death. It is said that he tried to have conversations with those who see him.
On October 24, 1905 Mary Jane Caley was staying in Suite 72 at The Aberdeen Hotel; the same one she had rented several times in the past. That day she had already bought her ticket to return by train to her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. Then for some unfathomable reason she shot herself in the temple. Why would a wealthy, 21-year-old woman do this?
Manhattan, New York, 1901 Penn Station was under construction, and Macy's had opened on 34th St. Around the corner from Tiffany, B. Altman and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, plans were underway to build a new Beaux-Arts hotel. A style called apartment hotels, which were the latest thing for out-of-towners who needed a pied-a-terre, without the need to hire servants or worry about maintenance. Residents dined in a communal dining room or restaurant, and hotel staff catered to their needs.
White cottages were found under the live oaks at Ponce Park, which was known for being the haven of women with children, and anglers who came to fish. This normally placid place was stirred up when seven skeletons were discovered by postmaster Frank Stone when he dug up his back lot.
PONCE PARK, DAYTONA, FEBRUARY 1, 1915
Stone had been "grubbing" some palmetto, live oak and bay bushes near the east line of his property, and along the road leading south to the Ponce de Leon Inlet lighthouse. He broke the skull with his hoe, and once he realized it was a cranium he began a careful excavation. The entire skeleton was unearthed, and he kept digging and finally exhumed seven skeletons.
A man was found nine years after he disappeared. It made the papers in Daytona, however the one question never asked is what happened to him.
James S. Tod was 23 years old when he was discharged from the Union army for a disability in 1863. He had served in the 1st Regiment, Ohio Infantry, Company E as a hospital steward.
In 1913, a telegram was sent from New Zealand to London, which solved a 23-year-old mystery.
The Marlborough sailed from Lyttleton, New Zealand with several passengers and a crew of 33 under the command of Captain W. Hird in January, 1890. She was a vessel of the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company's fleet, measuring 228 feet long, 35 feet broad and 21 feet deep with 1124 tons. The ship carried a cargo of frozen mutton and wool.
On October 22, 1927, the lumber schooner Coos Bay went wrecked outside Golden Gate off Mile Rock, while a thick fog covered the area. It had a crew of 30 and no passengers, but it seemed in the coming days that there was a 31st person on the ship.
The ship started as the collier Vulcan owned by the Pacific States Lumber Company. In it last incarnation it was named the S.S. Coos Bay. She was captained by B.W. Olsen.
In 1959, a group of hikers were found horribly mutilated and killed in a part of Russia's Ural Mountains. Until this day who murdered them remains a mystery, and since then other persons have died or disappeared there.
Dyatlov Pass is one of the most impassable regions of the Urals. Even the name of the region is shrouded in mystery and death. After the disappearance in 1959 of Igor Dyatlov and the hiking group he led, it has been known by this name.
Since time immemorial there have been stories of the spirits of murder victims coming back to point a finger at their killer and seek justice for themselves.
Such is the sad story of Zona Heaster Shue who lived in rural West Virginia at the turn of the 20th century.
ZONA AND THE STRANGER
Born Elva Zona Heaster in 1873, in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, Zona’s life is something of a mystery before she met her eventual husband Erasmus Stribbling “Trout” Shue in 1896. Shockingly only a year prior to their meeting, the records of Greenbrier County indicate that when she was twenty-two years old on November 29, 1895, she bore an illegitimate male child, who’s supposed father was an unskilled laborer named George Woldridge.
In New Orlean's Vieux Carre sits a house with an old-fashioned facade. Even before the turn of the 20th century, the Franco-Spanish residents of the old faubourg would whisper, "la maison est hantee",
After nightfall many walked past it with hurried steps. They were afraid to peer upwards and see the figure of a ghost child that haunted the rooftop once decorated by a latticed belvedere.
The three-storied home at 1140 Royal Street (Rue Royale) stood empty and ruined for many years.
