Murders, Disappearances, and Mystery: A Family Affair

Steve Snedegar, "Orlando Sentinel," March 27, 1994, via Newspapers.com

“These are not natural people.”

~Sheriff’s detective Lynn Wagner

On this blog I have covered many weird, dysfunctional, or even criminal families, but I don't think I have ever written about one where simple, straightforward evil so consistently lurked in the background.  This saga of murder and multiple disappearances may not be, strictly speaking, an unsolvable mystery--we have a pretty good guess what happened--but it is nonetheless a puzzle.  It stands as a perfect example of the unfathomable dark side of human nature.

One suspects that Steve Snedegar was rarely mistaken for an altar boy.  He first caught the attention of the authorities in the early 1970s, when he spent two years on the lam from the FBI.  (He was suspected of being involved in a tractor theft ring and the murder of a deputy sheriff in Ohio.)  After he was finally caught in Houston, the charges against him were mysteriously dropped.  It was believed that Snedegar cut some sort of deal with the FBI, but the details remain hidden from public view.

In 1978, Snedegar was penniless.  Three years later, he was a multi-millionaire.  The source of his sudden fortune is, like everything else in his life, both murky and deeply sinister.  Relatives believed that Steve, a licensed pilot, was making his money flying drugs out of Cuba.  Steve himself told people that he knew Fidel Castro “real well” and had “business” dealings with him.  By 1979, Snedegar also had a flourishing oil recycling business.  Two acquaintances, Tony Lambert and Tony McCullough tried to buy the business from him, but were rebuffed.  This was said to have led to bad feelings between the three men.

Snedegar had more personal disputes.  His 22-year-old daughter Lora had recently married.  Steve and his wife, Trudy, had bitterly opposed the match.  They had nothing in particular against Lora’s husband Bryce Morris--rather, they did not want Lora marrying or escaping their domination in any way.  Steve and Trudy were control freaks when it came to their children.  The offspring were given all the money they wanted, but in return, they were expected to submit to their parents’ domination.  (Considering all the skeletons in Steve’s closet, it’s not surprising that he did not want outsiders getting an intimate peek at his family.)

Lora, however, was the family rebel, the one with the spirit to talk back to her parents.  It’s clear that she married chiefly to escape her suffocating home life.  Unfortunately for her, it was an unsuccessful effort.  Soon after her marriage, Steve and Trudy had managed to pressure her into leaving her husband.  However, when in 1981, Lora’s parents ordered her to move to Florida with them, she refused.  She wanted to reconcile with her husband.  This led to bitter fights with her parents.  Just before Steve moved to Florida, a neighbor of Lora’s saw father and daughter arguing in the backyard.  Steve was screaming curses at Lora and finally spat in her face.

It was the last time Steve would see his daughter alive.

On August 10, 1981, Trudy made an unannounced visit to her daughter’s home in Greenfield, Indiana, apparently hoping to persuade Lora to end her marriage for good.  According to Trudy’s later account, she had dinner with her daughter, and went to bed.  When she woke up the next morning at 6 a.m., she found that the lights and television were still on, the sliding glass door was open, and Lora’s bed had not been slept in.  There was no sign of her daughter.  When the police arrived--seven hours later--they initially found nothing to suggest foul play.

Then, Trudy told them that Lora had left her purse behind.  John Munden, the chief deputy at the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office, immediately knew something was up.  He said, “I believe that a woman’s pocketbook is like a minister’s Bible--they don’t go anyplace without it.”  When he said as much to Trudy, she “looked at me funny.”  From then on, Munden was convinced he was dealing with a homicide.

So was Steve Snedegar.  As soon as he learned that Lora was missing, he walked into the sheriff’s office and dumped $10,000 in cash on Munden’s desk.  He told the deputy that he knew his daughter was dead.  One of his many enemies, he said, had kidnapped and murdered Lora in order to get back at him.  The money was to pay reserve officers to monitor a list of people he wanted watched 24 hours a day.

Munden was so unnerved that he silently accepted the money.  He wanted to use it to keep a close eye on Steve.

Steve told Munden that he and Trudy had two leading suspects in Lora’s disappearance--Tony Lambert and Tony McCullough.  He apparently made such a convincing case against the two men that Munden began to think the Snedegars might have been right.  However, before the sheriff’s office could launch any real investigation, it seems that Steve took matters into his own hands.  Three weeks after Lora vanished, he invited Tony Lambert to a business meeting in New Orleans.  He told Lambert he was interested in making him manager of Steve’s waste-oil business.  In truth, he told Munden he would use his private plane to fly Lambert out of town, where he would “get my answers” out of the man.

To date, Tony Lambert has never been seen again.  Steve told police that he did indeed meet with Lambert in New Orleans, but Tony denied having anything to do with Lora’s disappearance, and angrily left in a red Cadillac driven by a young blonde.  Or was it a green Cadillac?  Or a white one?  Whatever.  All Munden was ever able to learn is that Lambert’s last known whereabouts was when Steve flew him on a “sightseeing trip” over the Gulf of Mexico.

In April 1982, a farmhand discovered Lora’s badly decomposed body in a cornfield.  She had been shot in the head three times with a .25 caliber gun.  When Steve’s worst fears about his daughter were confirmed, he broke out sobbing and vowed that Lora’s murderer would pay.

One day in 1985, Tony McCullough received a phone call from a stranger named Gary Stafford, a mercenary who advertised his unusual services in “Soldier of Fortune” magazine.  Stafford informed him that someone had hired him to kill McCullough, and how much was McCullough willing to pay him to welsh on the bargain?  The two men settled on a payment of $10,000.  McCullough then called the FBI, with the result being that Stafford got two years in prison for extortion.

Stafford told the FBI that some guy in Florida hired him to eliminate a man he felt was involved in the murder of his daughter.  He got $5,000 up front, with the promise of another $20,000 when the deal was done.  When police questioned Steve about the matter, he merely shrugged and gave a smile that said, “Prove it.”

Chuck Smith, a former truck driver for Steve’s business in Indiana, had told police that the day before Lora vanished, he saw her with a “rough-looking character” who clearly frightened her.  When Smith told Trudy of this, she urged him not to go to the authorities, saying “We know who that is, and the police already know.”  

Trudy may have known who this man was, but the police certainly didn’t.  Trudy then went to Munden, trying to get Smith’s unlisted phone number from him.  She said she had a job offer for Smith.  “Dumb-ass me gives the number out,” Munden ruefully recalled.  “She looked at me with those cold glassy eyes and made the remark, ‘Steve does not have to know about this.’”

Smith subsequently got a phone call from a man who said he was with John Rogers Trucking in Knoxville Tennessee.  He said that Steve had recommended him for a job.  Smith, unemployed and desperate to find work, readily agreed.  The man sent him a bus ticket.  Smith boarded the bus…and was never seen again.  Police soon learned that there was no such company as “John Rogers Trucking.”

In the summer of 1986, Trudy confided to her other daughter, Brenda, that for the last five nights, she had awakened to find Steve holding a gun to her head.  “He’s going to kill me,” she said.  “I just don’t know when.”  Soon after that, Trudy and Steve left their house to go “country dancing.”  Only Steve returned.  The next morning, he told Brenda that Trudy had left him to go live in Tallahassee.  Later that day, Steve showed Brenda a suitcase containing $1 million dollars in large-denomination bills that he was hiding in the trunk of his Mercedes.  He told her to get the money if the police arrested him.  Brenda asked no questions.  She had clearly learned how to survive in the Snedegar family.  The following day, Steve and a never-identified man dumped a plastic-wrapped, human-body-sized object in the Ocklawaha River.  Although it is easy to guess what this “object” may have been, it has never been found.

Although no missing-persons report had been filed, authorities knew that Trudy had vanished, and they did not have to enlist Hercule Poirot to guess who was responsible.  It took police an entire year to persuade Brenda and her husband to report her mother’s disappearance, but they would only do so in Indiana.  “Fear,” said Detective Lynn Wagner, who had been investigating the complex Snedegar case since 1985.  “That’s the word they used.  They wouldn’t do it here because they were afraid Steve would kill their family.”

Over the next two years, Wagner repeatedly interrogated Steve about Trudy’s whereabouts, but all he got out of Snedegar were “head games.”  Then, Wagner heard that Steve was a dying man.  Assuming this was just another “head game,” Wagner did not believe it until he subpoenaed Steve’s medical records.  They confirmed that Snedegar had malignant melanoma.

Wagner last spoke to Steve in the late fall of 1989.  He begged Snedegar to spend what little time he had left clearing up the many dark mysteries surrounding him.  Steve refused.  He said he didn’t want to die in jail.  However, he told Wagner that he would be willing to write down everything he knew about all the deaths and disappearances.  The police could have this record once Steve was dead, allowing them to close the books on the cases.  Wagner believed that Steve kept that promise.  However, two hours after Steve died in January 1990, someone set a small bonfire of papers behind his house.  It’s a safe bet that the most reliable record we will ever get in this bizarre case was turned to ashes.

Although all these deaths and disappearances will never be judged in a court of law, Wagner and Munden were able to solve to their own satisfaction what had happened.  As for the death of Lora Snedegar, the tragedy that kicked off all the subsequent tragedies, they felt they knew who committed the murder: her own mother.  And if Trudy had lived, they believed they could have proved it.  

Their scenario was this:  Lora and Trudy fought over Lora’s marriage, and during the brawl, Trudy accidentally--or impulsively--shot her daughter.  (Trudy owned a .25 caliber gun, although investigators did not learn of this until after her disappearance.)  Wagner and Munden believed that Trudy’s father helped her dispose of the body.  (The father died not long after Lora vanished.)

It is believed that Trudy engineered Chuck Smith’s disappearance, because she feared that his story about the man who had frightened Lora might have somehow incriminated Trudy.  Trudy had probably also encouraged Steve to blame Tony Lambert and Tony McCullough for Lora’s murder, as a way of directing his suspicions away from herself.

Trudy’s fatal error was not disposing of Lora’s purse.  If she had thought to do that, the police may have well concluded that Lora had left voluntarily.  Munden noted that on the night that Trudy disappeared, she had left her own purse at home.  “I think she deliberately left her pocketbook at home that night as a sign,” said Munden.  “She knew she made that mistake with Lora, and it alerted police.  I think she did it on purpose that night because she knew she and Steve would argue.”

Munden believed that Steve had long suspected Trudy of murdering Lora, but he only knew for sure on the night Trudy disappeared.  Perhaps she finally confessed.  Perhaps she accidentally let something slip.  We will never know.  In any case, Steve finally got what he wanted.  He made his daughter’s killer pay.

In December 1993, Steve and Trudy’s son Joe was clearing out Steve’s house in Astor, Florida, when he found a paper tucked away in the guest book for Lora’s funeral.  It showed a map of Steve’s property with a mysterious “X” marked on one spot.  The area was excavated, but nothing was found.  Steve managed to continue his “head games” even from beyond the grave.  As for the million dollars in cash Steve hid in his Mercedes, that proved to be yet another unsolved disappearance.  It’s suspected that Steve’s girlfriend, who moved in with him after Trudy vanished, ran off with the loot.

As Wagner said, these were not natural people.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

We have tea!

A marriage ends with a murder/suicide.

"Through thick and thin" was originally used literally.

How prehistoric humans survived a supervolcano.

Why we call them "dive bars."

So maybe deflecting asteroids isn't such a great idea.

An extinct human species who appear to have buried their dead.

You will be pleased to hear that scientists spend their time staring at their fingernails and getting bats drunk.

The grave of a woman who never existed.

Photos of the markets of Old London.

Related: Some lost London taverns.

We just found the world's oldest known mummies, and wouldn't you know they'd be in the last place you'd look.

The buried treasure in China's Terracotta Army.

Nuns on the run!

The Pepsi Needle Panic.

The enslaved chocolatier who helped save George Washington.

How the Japanese find missing cats.  They ask nicely.

The strange story of an author who chose death over revisions.

An assortment of Weird Wills.

Robert Baddeley's Twelfth Night cakes.

Rethinking part of the fall of the Roman Empire.

A Gilded Age childhood of "zany confusion."

So maybe it's aliens after all.  (A side note: my problem with the "panspermia theory" has always been "OK, smart guys, so who created the aliens?")

The role of the British House of Lords in the Victorian era.

The FBI agent and the psychic who solve crimes together.

A description of the funeral of Elisabeth of Austria.

The Romanov photographs of Anna Vyrubova.

Charles James Fox's "Whig rump."

And, finally, RIP the "Indiana Jones of Ancient Alcohol," which has to be one of the greatest job descriptions ever.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at one very bizarre family saga.  In the meantime, here's Sarah Vaughan.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Some author--I can’t recall who he or she was--once wrote that it made no sense that ghosts were always seen fully clothed.  Shouldn’t they all be naked?  That writer would be pleased with the following news item from the “Springfield News Sun,” August 22, 1999:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ghost stories are pretty common around the old Iraqi city of Haditha. Still, when the ghosts start dancing naked in front of oncoming motorists, it creates quite a stir. 

The state-run Alwan weekly said Saturday that drivers passing through Horan Valley outside the town of Haditha, 135 miles northeast of Baghdad, were reporting that "ghosts appeared next to the bridge, naked and doing some acrobatic moves." 

Tales of ghosts in the Horan Valley are common, but these ghosts were "throwing themselves before cars, causing the drivers to panic,” the paper said. 

Alwan quoted motorist Shawki Sabar as saying "they were almost human although I could not concentrate on their looks because I was so scared and it was dark." 

The ghosts were so lifelike that one motorist thought he'd hit a person and reported the accident to police. The newspaper said the police checked the area for a body, but found nothing.

Some motorists apparently suspect a less supernatural explanation. According to Alwan, drivers don't brake for ghosts just in case they are really a ploy by thieves to rob cars.

The Natives of the Red Dragon

A journal dedicated to stamp-collecting seems like an unlikely place to find a prime slice of The Weird, but that just goes to show that life is full of surprises.  In 1928, “The Stamp Lover” carried an article by one C.H.R. Andrews titled “The Red Dragon Stamps” that is, frankly, not quite like anything I’ve ever heard of.  I’m a bit surprised that Andrews’ story seemed to languish in total obscurity until it was revisited in a 1987 issue of “Fortean Times.”

According to Andrews, for some months past, stamp aficionados had been puzzled by the unexplained appearance of some small-denomination British stamps that were overprinted with red dragons.  They appeared on at least 20 letters and postcards which had pairs of stamps, with only the one on the left side sporting the overprint.  The stamps began to appear soon after a noted Welsh book collector named Rhys Evans inexplicably disappeared.

On April 4, 1928, Evans left his home to show a friend named Jenkins, who was a professor at nearby University College, an ancient book of Welsh stories and folklore.  The book spoke of a secret society tasked with guarding five sacred dragons, and included some sort of coded map which Evans hoped Jenkins could interpret.

Evans never made it to the College.  In fact, he seemed to vanish completely.  Two days after his disappearance, his wife received a letter postmarked from Cardiff.  It bore two stamps, one of which was the dragon overprint.  The letter--written in Welsh--was clearly in Rhys’ handwriting.  It stated that her husband was doing well, and she should not worry about him.  The note ended with the words “Trigolion y ddraig Goch.” (Natives of the Red Dragon.)

Other people subsequently received letters purporting to be from the “Natives of the Red Dragon,” all bearing the strange dragon stamps.  The letters all discussed old Welsh legends.  They were sent from various places around Wales, largely from towns on the sites of ancient Roman camps.

Five days after Evans disappeared, he was found sitting by a lake in Brynmill Park, Swansea.  He seemed in good health and spirits, but he refused to give any explanation of why he had vanished, or where he had been during his absence.  He no longer had the book he wished to show Professor Jenkins, and seemed rather relieved to be rid of the thing.  All he would ever say about his mysterious experience was “There were dragons in Wales today.”

There is a footnote which may--or may not--be connected to our little tale.  Around the time Evans vanished, three children from the Welsh village of Llandegley saw a strange beast in nearby Radnor Forest.  One of the children was brave--or foolhardy--enough to try to follow the creature, but his path was blocked by two men.  These men were dressed in white, with depictions of red dragons on their chests.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump!

Just don't forget to smile for the Strange Company HQ's security camera!

The Great Candy Panic.

The mystery of the babies in the church cellar.

The comfort of a nice tombstone.

A cave is challenging theories about the history of farming.

Africa's oldest known mummy.

The history behind "Little Miss Muffet."

The changing image of George Washington's mother.

The mysteries of the medieval Moon.

The first official report of a yeti.

The Great Tea Race.

How WWI spurred a rise in spiritualism.

How a blind man and his guide dog survived 9/11.

This week in Russian Weird:  Nothing to see here, just their Doomsday Radio kicking into high gear.

The enigma of Zelda Fitzgerald's slipper.

Eyewitness accounts from the gallows.

A would-be priest turned professional gambler.

We now know what caused the Plague of Justinian.

A Georgian-era poet and travel writer.

When a woman gets her son-in-law to murder her husband, you know you are not seeing the happiest of families.

A BOOGLE OF WEASELS.

The life of Anna of Kyiv, Queen of France.

The SS Chimborazo's narrow escape.

The author who created the modern vampire.

The more we look at 31/Atlas, the weirder the damned thing looks.

Why we call psychiatrists "shrinks."

The origins of the phrase, "spick and span."

British parliamentary reporting in the 19th century.

More clues about how the Maya kingdom collapsed.

The 1925 "Special Restrictions Order."

The beauty of knife rests.

The man who blinded Bach.

New York's "boy Mayor."

How Boston baked beans got their name.

It may not surprise you that Australia is said to have man-eating trees.

And, finally, RIP Maru, one of the internet's most beloved cats.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at an odd little story involving a disappearance...and dragons!  In the meantime, here's some Bach.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

Out: Spontaneous Human Combustion.  In: Spontaneous Shirt Combustion.  The “Western Daily Press,” April 22, 1996:

Can anybody solve the mystery of the frazzled shirt, the melted clothes pegs, and the bang from the sky?

A tale of the paranormal, perhaps?

Father-of-three Alan Fairless has been left a bemused man by the sudden destruction of his favorite green-and-white striped polo shirt.

His Sunday lie-in was interrupted at about 6 a.m. by an explosive-like noise in his back garden. 

But there was no sign of lightning or anything strangely untoward around Howes Close in Warmley, near Bristol.

But later as he sipped his morning coffee, Mr. Fairless noticed the smouldering remains of his Lacoste shirt beneath the washing line.

"All that remains of the shirt is a few bits of green cloth around the shoulders.  It was barely recognizable,” said Mr. Fairless.

“I’ve no idea how this happened.  None of the other clothes on the washing line were touched.”

“It was a fine night.  I even phoned the weather centre and they said there had been no reports of lightning.”

The engineer added, “It couldn’t have been a practical joke either.  My neighbors are very quiet.”

“It couldn’t have been the children either since the eldest is only four.”

His wife Marcia said, “We had just had a quiet night in and we were woken up by this bang.  It’s a real mystery.”

Bristol Weather Centre said they had no reports of lightning early on Sunday morning.

There was a sequel to this story in the “Bristol Observer” on July 5:

Washing lines in Warmley were the subject of a series of bizarre arson attacks last weekend. Clothes and property were damaged at seven homes following a two-hour blitz on Saturday morning (June 29), from 4am to 6am. The attacks happened in Quantock Close, Chiltern Close, Malvern Drive and Meadow Court. The fire in Chiltern Close spread to the side of the house and damaged a conservatory.

A playpen of toys was also destroyed in the first blaze in Quantock Close. The attacks follow the destruction of a man's shirt while it was hanging on a washing line in Warmley at the end of April this year.

Alan Fairless, of Howes Close, heard a loud explosion in his back yard at 6am and later discovered the remains of his shirt under the washing line.

Fire Brigade spokesman John Dando said he felt there was a link between that incident and the current ones.

“It’s extraordinary.  I think the incidents have got to be related.  There is no logical explanation.

“But on a serious note, it’s obviously worrying that someone is stalking around at that time of night setting fire to washing lines. 

"I cannot understand what motivation anyone would have for doing that. It's not much of a progression from setting fire to garden sheds, cars and homes. We want this person caught as soon as possible." 

Police have appealed for witnesses to the attacks. Phone Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 if you can help.

I couldn’t find out if the mystery was ever solved.

The Glidewell Ghost

"Louisville Courier-Journal," March 30, 1887, via Newspapers.com

Ghosts always have a way of popping up when you least expect them.  One of the most baffling aspects of poltergeist activity is its usual lack of any obvious "trigger" or underlying cause.  Life for its victims is perfectly normal one minute, awash in The Weird the next.  One prime example took place in Bucksville, Kentucky, in 1887.

The household of farmer Samuel H. Glidewell was utterly ordinary until one day early in March.  The first intimation that something was very, very out-of-the-ordinary came when the Glidewell daughters noticed that all the sheets and blankets had been removed from the beds and packed in a box upstairs.  This happened so repeatedly that for several days, the family was forced to keep a continuous watch on the upper rooms.  No one was seen, but the mysterious stripping of the beds somehow continued.  The minute the bedrooms were left unguarded, the bedclothing  would be removed and folded away.  Then, inexplicable streams of water would occasionally run across the rafters.  The family could only conclude that a monkey had escaped from some circus and could find nothing better to do than pack bedding and throw water about.  However, a minute search of the upstairs failed to uncover a monkey, or anyone else for that matter.

Their invisible visitor began to show more blatant hostility.  A plank was removed from the upstairs floor, and old boots and shoes were hurled at the occupants of the lower rooms.  Again, no person or animal could be found.  At night, the Glidewells could hear eerie sounds coming from upstairs, which sounded like the labored breathing of someone who was dying.  If anyone went up to investigate, on their return they would hear a sound of something heavy falling on the steps just behind them.  Furniture would somehow appear and disappear inside of locked rooms.  Perhaps most unsettlingly, one morning Glidewell's son noticed that his gun was missing from his bedroom.  It was eventually found in the adjoining room, with the hammer pulled back.

Not knowing what else to do, Glidewell called in the neighbors to see if any of them could get to the bottom of all this.  Two of them, described as "reliable men as can be found," went upstairs.  They too failed to see anything, but others waiting below suddenly found themselves drenched with water--water that came from no evident source.  These mysterious showers continued.  Without warning, people inside the house would have water fall on them, and others in the room could never see it fall.  A boy who came to see the now locally famed "ghost" ran into a closet to avoid getting drenched.  As anyone who knows the ways of spooks could have predicted, a stream of water cascaded down, soaking him to the skin.

The poltergeist continued to expand its repertoire.  It tore up carpets.  It continued to move furniture around.  On one occasion, a roaring fire was discovered in a securely locked room that had not been opened for years.  One night, the family was awakened by the sounds of violin music and dancing coming from that same locked room.  When the Glidewells finally worked up the courage to enter the room, nothing was found except a candle, which had just nearly burned to the bottom.  The next night, at the stroke of twelve, loud peals of laughter were heard coming from a closet under the staircase.  When one onlooker nervously opened the closet door and peeked inside, he was nearly drowned with a deluge of icy cold water, which was accompanied by more bursts of ghostly laughter.  The following morning when the family entered the dining room, they were greeted by a skull and crossbones at the head of the table.  At each plate was a small sprig of cedar.  [Note: Cedars, known as "burial trees," have a long folkloric connection to cemeteries and various death-related superstitions.  It's an easy guess that these sprigs were not intended to convey anything cheery to the Glidewells.]

This was the last straw for the beleaguered family.  They immediately abandoned the house, taking refuge with a neighbor.  While they were moving out their household goods, the table and chairs suddenly began dancing around the room.  When one of the Glidewells tried grabbing a chair, he received a shock as if from an electric battery.  This was followed by another peal of the sinister laughter.  

The local marshal, accompanied by a posse of armed men, did a prolonged search of the house.  They heard many strange noises, all interspersed with the bursts of mocking laughter, but could find no "rational" explanation for the phenomena.  They left puzzled, exhausted, and not a little unnerved.  

Unfortunately for the Glidewells, their ghost had no wish to be left behind.  It was obviously enjoying their company.  When they moved, so did the spirit, along with its usual bag of tricks.  In their new abode, the family heard the now-familiar demonic laughter and endured the now-familiar drenchings of cold water. One morning, they found that their milk supply had been replaced with a foul-smelling fluid.  On another occasion, the oil was removed from the lamps and replaced with this same repulsive liquid. Doors that had been left securely locked were found wide open.  The mysterious moving of furniture was so frequent as to become practically commonplace.

The strangest event of all took place in the new house.  One night, Mr. Glidewell was just dropping off to sleep when he was suddenly jerked wide awake by...something.  He had not heard or seen anything, but he realized there was some other presence in the room.  In a moment, a pale, bluish light became visible.   It seemed to radiate from outside the house.  When he cautiously crept to the window, he saw, about ten steps away, a ball of pale blue flame about three inches in diameter hovering several feet off the ground.  As he stared at the object, it began to wave to and fro, emitting a strange, flute-like music.  Then, the air around him was filled with an odd perfume, one so overpowering it caused him to collapse on the bed unconscious.  When Glidewell came to the next morning, he found that a wet, blood-red handkerchief of fine fabric, with the initial "U" embroidered in black silk, had been placed upon his forehead.  Although the handkerchief was exhibited to hundreds of curious onlookers, no one could identify it.

Poor Mr. Glidewell was psychologically destroyed by this experience.  It was reported that his "nervous system is shattered and it is feared that total derangement of the mind will speedily follow."  He was desperate to sell his property and move out of state--taking care not to leave the ghost his forwarding address--but he could find no one willing to take the "ghoul-disturbed" place at any price.  After this item, the story seems to have dropped out of the newspapers, so I cannot say when--or if--the Glidewells were finally rid of their persecution.

A man who had drowned many years previously was buried in what eventually became Glidewell's garden.  It was speculated that this man's spirit resented having his eternal rest disturbed, and so was taking a supernatural revenge against the interloping family.  Others suggested it was the spirit of a young girl who had committed suicide in the house in 1869, a short time before the Glidewells moved in.  Those remained only theories, of course.

It is notoriously difficult to get a straight answer out of a poltergeist.

Weekend Link Dump

 

Welcome to this week's Link Dump, where it's up, up, and away!

Try to sell a house that features art stolen by the Nazis, and watch the fun begin!

A brief history of pomegranates.

Some remote viewers took a gander at 31/Atlas, and I can't say they came up with cheery stuff.

A serial poisoner in Ohio.

The princess who chose painting over palaces.

The horrors of 19th century merchant service.

The (possibly) sinister story behind the Bean Puzzle Tombstone.

The well-preserved home of an 18th century textile designer.

The U.S. Army's cancer-causing fog.

When tennis was the Sport of Kings.

If you're in the mood to sail across the Indian Ocean, here's a how-to guide.

The world's most dangerous tree.

The start of the school lunch program.

Some talking poltergeists and a ventriloquist.

Why the world mourned the murder of a tree.

The ghosts of an Arizona resort.

How King James I was responsible for the Macbeth Witches.

A Prussian military officer at Valley Forge.

The too-short career of a female bookbinder.

A very special fossil.

For some reason, we're enamored of myths about frogs living in stones.

Two father-daughter poets.

The WWII bomber that influenced modern airplanes.

A brief history of the Louvre.

The disappearance of SS Vaitarna.

A Vanderbilt black sheep.

A Civil War sketchbook.

The controversial Younger Dryas Impact Theory.

In other news, badgers have turned to grave-robbing.

The pig who had a social security number.

A noble revenge.

The stories behind some popular funeral foods.

A Neolithic site that could rewrite history.

We're sorta clueless about how anesthesia works.

The colorful life of a 19th century British MP.

The colorful life of a Founding Father.

Some strange burial mounds in Kazakhstan.

An ancient Egyptian mathematical papyrus.

A murder on a crowded train.

A Pennsylvania haunting.

The life and art of Evelyn De Morgan.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a 19th century poltergeist.  In the meantime, here's Emmylou.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

It’s not every day that you come across an episode of a reality show titled, “Who Gets the Grave?”  The “Wilmington News,” August 6, 1881:

A singular affair comes to light in the old town of Glasgow, this State. Mrs. Thomas B. Ellison's baby died in 1878, and in due time was laid to rest in the Pencader church yard. He was a bright little baby, and in respect to its memory it was determined by the bereaved parents to have a sufficient monument over the little grave as soon as money could be saved.

In the meantime the mother attended faithfully to the mound and kept it in good repair. The bright sun and the refreshing rain brought green grass and flowers, and no grave in the cemetery looked brighter. On Sabbath morning, as was her wont, she went after service to the grave. To her surprise she saw at the head of the mound a beautiful tombstone, with lots of white-winged angels and nice little verses all over it.

Approaching nearer she saw, not the name of her own little darling, sculptured by an unknown friend, but, instead, the name of Brown. Hurrying back to the church, Mrs. Ellison met Jacob Cazier, an influential man of the town, and to him she related what she saw and then proceeded forthwith to interview the father of baby Brown, an infant that had some nine years before died of cholera infantum, and of him demand an explanation. He gave the mother to understand in a very forcible way that he was not a man to go around pirating among the graveyards for other people's offspring. He guessed he knew his baby, and as he was a poor man, it was not to be supposed that he was traveling around the country putting fancy grave stones upon the graves of other people's babies.

Beneath that mound he insisted were baby Brown's bones, and by its blessed memory he didn't propose to have vandal hands laid on his property. As Mr. Brown and Mrs. Ellison were each positive, there was a big dilemma. The people became interested, and became so interested in the controversy that they took sides.

The baby Brown party was somewhat the weaker from the fact that the baby Ellisonites were led by a woman and the flame of chivalry extant made it so. As Brown threatened prosecution the other side wisely left matters in the hands of the trustees of the church. It was a momentous question, the ownership of the baby. They discussed and adjourned, adjourned to discuss, until they settled upon an evening for the decision. Both families, with other witnesses, were cited to appear.

Mrs. Ellison, confident and hopeful, came promptly. Brown was so positive that to appear he thought would compromise his dignity. In the meantime Mrs. Ellison had consulted Mr. Ray, justice at Newark, who, in looking at the case in all its bearing, suggested that as a crisis had come, perhaps it would be well to look at the coffins. Mrs. Ellison was willing. The trustees, hearing the threat of Brown, refused to touch the grave claimed by Brown, but consented to have opened a little neglected grave near by. The digging was done with dispatch, and in the stillness the interested townspeople that crowded could hear their own hearts beat.

At last the coffin was reached. There was suppressed excitement about the grave. A little more scraping; a few tosses of the spade, the last shovelsfull were thrown, when lo! the coffin of the little baby Brown was brought to light and recognized by the undertaker. The mother had won. The strange tombstone was taken down, and in order to more fully convince the doubters the little grave was opened and the coffin of baby Ellison was uncovered.

I’m guessing it took years for Mr. Brown to live that one down.

The Mysterious Fires at Bladenboro

"Philadelphia Inquirer," March 13, 1932, via Newspapers.com

This blog has featured several stories involving mysterious fires.  However, the most famous, and probably the most well-investigated, case of this sort took place in the town of Bladenboro, North Carolina, in 1932.

One afternoon in February the family of Charles H. Williamson was sitting quietly in their parlor, the picture of Norman Rockwell harmony.  The calm was suddenly broken by a neighbor rushing into their midst, shouting, "Your house is burning up!"  The startled family followed him into their dining room, where, sure enough, a window-shade and some curtains were ablaze.

Fortunately, the group was able to quickly tear them down and smother the flames.  Then, their shock turned to sheer puzzlement.  The wood around the burned items was completely untouched.  And how did the fire start at all?  No one had lit a fire in the room for weeks.  No one had smoked there.  There were no inflammable chemicals in the house.  The neighbor who had alerted them had had a clear view of the dining room all afternoon, and had not seen any stranger in the vicinity of the house.

All the Williamsons could do was shrug and walk back to the parlor.  No sooner had they returned that another fire broke out in another window of the dining room.  It was the same story:  there were no signs of anything that could have set off the fire, and the window sash appeared untouched by the flames.

Things were clearly getting weird.  The family summoned friends and neighbors to help them find a solution to the mystery.  They all inspected every inch of the house, hoping to find something--anything--that might explain these baffling bonfires.  Nothing at all suspicious was found.

That night was without incident, which left the Williamsons with a great feeling of relief.  The next morning, they went off to church with the cheery assumption that the previous day's event was a one-off--peculiar, yes, but nothing they would ever see again.

They returned home from the service happily anticipating their Sunday lunch.  While the others began to assemble in the dining room, Mrs. Williamson went upstairs to her bedroom.  And immediately began screaming.

An understandable action, considering that she had found her bed on fire.

The family rushed into the room, grabbed the blazing bedspread, and beat out the flames.  They were stunned to see that--like the window sashes on the previous day--the rest of the bed was completely untouched by the fire.

A few minutes after this incident, one of the Williamson daughters, Katie, opened a closet door, and found that a pile of paper dress patterns was ablaze.  The flames were quickly extinguished--the family was getting a lot of practice at putting out fires--and they saw that nothing else in the closet had been touched by the fire.  Shortly after that, Katie went into the dining room, where she saw smoke coming from a cardboard box containing a fruit cake..  She opened it, and saw that the paper wrapping around the cake was on fire.  However--I think you know by now what's coming--neither the cake nor the box was so much as singed.

Naturally, word of the strange goings-on at the Williamson home swiftly spread through Bladenboro.  Naturally, the house drew a crowd of curiosity seekers and amateur sleuths eager to find a solution to the mystery.  Naturally, none of these people were any help whatsoever.

The Williamsons' uninvited audience was not disappointed, however.  A group of some fifteen people were treated to the sight of a second closet fire.  A pair of pants hanging inside was on fire.  Nothing else in the closet was at all damaged.  On one occasion, while some of the Williamsons and a few out-of-town guests were sitting in one of the bedrooms, they all saw the bed suddenly burst into flames right in front of their eyes.

Local firemen, electricians, and other experts in such matters struggled to come up with an explanation for all this.  A local doctor suggested that "a combination of certain gases in the air" might be responsible.  However, tests of the air in various parts of the house showed nothing abnormal.  The electricity to the house was cut off, on the chance that the fires were set by some short in the wiring.  A theory that the fires were being deliberately set for insurance purposes fizzled out when it was discovered that the house was not insured.  Could bolts of lightning have entered the house and set off the fires?  (The area had not had any lighting strikes for months.)  Perhaps dried phosphorus, that was then commonly used in rat and mouse traps, was responsible?  (It turned out that nothing of the sort had ever been used in the house.)  Were the Williamsons staging this for publicity?  If so, why?

While everyone was still debating the matter, the phantom firebug upped its game in an alarming way.  Katie Williamson was standing in one of the rooms with some of her friends, when--seemingly out of nowhere--her skirt burst into flames.  She was able to immediately tear it off and stamp out the fire.  It was found that the skirt had no damage to it, other than one small hole.

After this incident, the Williamsons sensibly ran for the exits.  They removed all their possessions out of the house and took lodgings in the home of a friend.  After an uneventful night, Mr. Williamson decided the family had to take the chance and move back into the house.  It seemed ridiculous to be chased out of their own residence by an intangible mystery.

The family had scarcely resettled in their home when--as if to taunt them--another bedspread suddenly exploded into flame.  Then the dining room tablecloth followed suit.  As usual, nothing around these articles was so much as singed.

All told, nearly thirty separate fires were recorded in the home.  Thankfully for the Williamsons, after a few days the outbreaks ceased as suddenly and inexplicably as they had started, but leaving their cause forever a puzzle.