Boo! Dismemberment

Oh my friends – didn’t you get a chill just reading that title – dismemberment?  It does bring me shutters thinking about it.  You see this is a story that read about and heard on television.  I couldn’t believe my piggy eyes and ears!  I was shocked and ran to tell mom/dad.  They were in awe as well.

There was a man that lived in Tennessee.  Back in November of last year, he and his wife had a huge fight.  Things didn’t end well.  The fight escalated and the guy ended up killing his wife, dismembering her and putting her in their freezer in the garage of their house.  There she was for two days.

During those two days, the man kept thinking his wife was coming to him in his dreams about what happened.  He finally went and checked the freezer and she was alive!  They had a long conversation and she was telling him how much she loved him.  He was crying when he called 911 to come out and help her.

The police arrived to the house.  When they went into the garage, there was no way the woman could have been talking to the guy – she was dead and had been for several days.  Did she come back to seek her revenge?

 

Boo! Deep South

Some friends of ours in the deep south here took a picture of their home a couple of weeks ago.  When they were looking at the pictures, they saw something that kind of stood out for them.  They didn’t see it while they were taking pictures of their house.  Do you see it?  Would you go back into your home if this was your crib?

 

 

 

 

 

Boo! Subway

Let’s talk about Subway today.  Not just any Subway but the Subway located in Dodgeville, Wisconsin.  This building that is now the Subway used to be a Harley Davidson shop owned by Mr and Mrs Forbes.  Back on the night of April 13, 1984, the couple went out driving when a car load of young men driving too fast, over 100 mph, crashed into the Forbes car killing everyone involved.

Today, Mrs. Forbes haunts the Subway building.  She is know to throw items off shelves, she sets off beepers on the doors, cuts sandwiches and calls out employee names.  She is even know to appear at the cash register with a stern look on her face.  And when she appears, she has a foul odor.

Would you like to meet for lunch here?

Courtesy of Huff Post

 

31 Days of Spook – Children Say the Darnedest Things

Sometimes, little ones can say the darnedest things when you are least expecting it.  They say that children are more ‘open’ to the paranormal.  After reading these stories below, do tell me what you think. Have you ever been told anything of this nature by a child?

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A few years ago, I was putting my friend’s daughter to bed for the night.  She was about three at the time and she was fighting going to sleep.  She asked me why she had to go to bed and I said, “Because it is late and it’s time for little girls to get a good night’s rest.”  

She then pointed at nothing across the room and said, “What about that little girl?”

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I was heading to the bathroom on the second floor of my aunt’s house when I saw my cousin April on the stairs.  April was four and very animated.  She was busy making funny faces while sitting on the stairs.  I asked her what she was doing and she said, “I’m copying the lady with the braid.”  I looked around and there was no one else but us.  I asked, “Where is the lady April?”  She pointed to a beam running parallel to the stairwell.  I asked April, “What is the lady doing?”  She said, “Making funny faces.”  I smiled and started walking up the stairs again when April said something that stopped me in my tracks.  “Her braids are wrapped around her neck.”  I turned back and and asked April to repeat herself.  April pointed and said, “The lady is hanging by her braid, she’s making funny faces.”  Then April started making a face which I then realize was as if someone was gasping for air.

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I watched a few kids while their parents were at a movie.  I put the youngest kid, age 4, to sleep and watched television downstairs until the parents came home.  The next day, the parents called me.  According to the 4 year old, I stood inthe doorway and stared at him for a very long time just smiling.  

 

31 Days of Spook – Subway

Let’s talk about Subway today.  Not just any Subway but the Subway located in Dodgeville, Wisconsin.  This building that is now the Subway used to be a Harley Davidson shop owned by Mr and Mrs Forbes.  Back on the night of April 13, 1984, the couple went out driving when a car load of young men driving too fast, over 100 mph, crashed into the Forbes car killing everyone involved.

Today, Mrs. Forbes haunts the Subway building.  She is know to throw items off shelves, she sets off beepers on the doors, cuts sandwiches and calls out employee names.  She is even know to appear at the cash register with a stern look on her face.  And when she appears, she has a foul odor.

Would you like to meet for lunch here?

Courtesy of Huff Post

 

31 Days of Spook – Deep South

Some friends of ours in the deep south here took a picture of their home a couple of weeks ago.  When they were looking at the pictures, they saw something that kind of stood out for them.  They didn’t see it while they were taking pictures of their house.  Do you see it?  Would you go back into your home if this was your crib?

 

 

 

 

 

31 Days of Spook – Ellis Hotel

Buckle up my friends… it’s going to be a bumpy ride today.  Today we are focusing on the Ellis Hotel that is located in downtown Atlanta, right in mom/dad’s backyard if you will.

The Ellis Hotel used to be called the Winecoff Hotel.  On December 7, 1946 it had over 260 guests checked in for overnight.  Around 3:00AM (the witching hour some say), an elevator operator smelled smoke near the fifth floor and notified other employees.  Unfortunately by that time, the third, fourth and fifth floors were already on fire. The hotel was suppose to be fireproof and it turned out that night that it wasn’t.  Due to being ‘fireproof, there was no fire escapes, no fire doors, no sprinklers or alarm system.  Over 119 guests perished that night.

The hotel was reopened in 1951 as the Peachtree Hotel on Peachtree.  It passed through multiple ownerships and in 2007 it was named the Ellis Hotel.  There are rumors of items being moved, voices, children running and woman screaming down the hallways.  One time, two weeks in a row, the current alarm system went off at 2:48AM – the same time each week.

Mom/dad felt festive one day about a year ago.  It was during their monthly date night and they spent the night at the Hotel Ellis.  It doesn’t take much to spook dad but mom on the other hand is a hard one to crack.  They stayed on the third floor in a very nice room.  Dad woke mommy up around 2:30AM complaining about the activity in the hallway.  When mom checked it out, there was nothing.  She didn’t hear it or see anything but dad said it woke him up.  Around 3:30AM, mommy woke up smelling smoke.  She’s very sensitive to the smell and she said it was overwhelming.  Again, she woke daddy up and he didn’t smell anything.  And for some reason, the elevator door went up and down a lot that night.  They could hear the doors opening and closing but no foot steps.  Needless to say, they didn’t get much sleep that night.

 

31 Days of Spook – Dad’s Aunt Dorothy

Today’s spook tale is a real scary story, something that happened to my daddy when he was a young boy.  Are you ready for this?  Are you sure?  You might want to hold someone’s hand.

When dad was around was 10 years old, his mom’s Aunt Dorothy passed away.  She had a house in Blue Ridge, West Virginia.  It looked similar to this picture.  Up on a hill top, had a wrap around porch and was two stories with a full basement.  The house looked normal but had a little bit of an eerie factor… especially to a young child.  Let me give you a little bit background on some chilling history of the home.

Aunt Dorothy had a brother named John that also lived with her. There’s two different stories that circulated about what happened to dear poor John.  One was that Aunt Dorothy and John had dinner one night.  Afterwards, he stood up, crossed himself and then fell over dead.  They other story was they had a fight one day and Aunt Dorothy left the house.  When she returned from cooling down, he was dead.  No one knows which tale is how poor John really died.  Only one fact did remain – John was dead.  From that day forward, Aunt Dorothy locked his room and no one was ever allowed to enter his room.   And although the room was locked and she had the key, she would often mention how it sounded like someone was in the room at night walking around.

Upon Aunt Dorothy’s death, daddy’s mom and dad took him to the house so they could start cleaning some things up to sale the home.  They traveled out of state and got to Blue Ridge, West Virginia on a Thursday evening.  They went to Aunt Dorothy’s home the next day to start the clean up.  They went inside and it was cool inside, almost like goosebump kind of cool with the hair on your arms standing up.  This was strange because in that time during the 1970’s in this area, there really wasn’t central heating and air.  It was the middle of August and it was hot outside, in the 90’s plus.  Typical summer time weather – hot and very humid.  But, in the home it was cool and comfortable, almost ice cold.  They commented on how it was so cold that you could almost hang meat.  But they started to go through the home to see what they wanted, starting with the upstairs.

They found the key to the locked room that once belonged to Aunt Dorothy’s brother John.  The room had just been locked and never touched – as if he was returning back home one day and it was just frozen in time.  There was a book on the bedside table that was still marked where he had left off from reading.  Clothes were still scattered about the room.  The bed was still made.  There was a partial letter written on the desk to an old friend that was never finished.  The room had a eerie feeling like someone was still there and it was cold in this room as well.  One thing that was strange about the room.  There was no cob webs, no dust, nothing that looked like this room had been vacant for over 15 years. It was bizarre but they figured Aunt Dorothy had been in dusting.  But why dust and not pick up the scattered clothing?

Daddy’s father wanted him to go down into the basement alone to check for any tools that they possibly might want to bring home.  Daddy being all of 10 said sure.  How very brave of him.   Each step he took going down into the dark, cold and dank basement, he felt like he was being watched.  At times, it was like someone was following him but no one else was there when he looked around.  He found some things that they might possibly want and he gathered them up.  Slowly, he took everything upstairs with each step still feeling like he was being watched and followed.  And yes he was a child and you might be saying that he was scared because of his age.  Well, was he?  Let’s continue our story.

They stayed at the house on/off for the next couple of days cleaning.  They would go back to the hotel each night and return in the hot August weather with the coolness inside of the home.  Each day they were there cleaning and fixing things up, the house remained cool like there was an air conditioner on… but there wasn’t one. 

On the last day, dad’s mom asked him and his father to start cleaning up the living room area while she was starting in the parlor.  There was an old china cabinet that had french doors on the front.  When you looked through the glass panes, you could see a locked latch across the front.  Dad’s mom tried the doors, but she couldn’t get them open.  They were firmly locked.   Inside of the china cabinet, there was some sterling silver and china that dad’s mom wanted to take back home.

She didn’t want to break the doors in hopes of selling the antique furniture.  On the opposite side of the wall, there was a hutch.  She asked for the boys to come over to possibly help find a key to the china cabinet.  While the boys were searching the hutch, all of a sudden dad’s mom let out a chilling scream.

They turned around immediately and the french doors to the china cabinet were standing wide open as if someone had opened them both at the same time.  Dad’s mom took full advantage of the opportunity and removed the pieces she wanted.  Afterwards, she pushed the doors back together and the cabinet locked itself back up.  You could hear the click-click sound of the latch going right back to where it was previously.

We took the items we wanted out to the car while dad’s father took the trash out.  We came back into the house to lock it up to leave our final time.  We noticed that the house had lost the coolness feeling that it had and had become hot just like it was outside in the August air.  Three days of air conditioning, goosebump coolness, hair standing on your arms and now hot humid heat.  We left that day and never returned.

 

31 Days of Spook – The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

Today is one that is close to our hearts here at the Hotel Thompson.  Today, we focus on one of the all time greatest movies, “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken”.  What, you don’t believe me when I say it’s scary?  Let’s discuss shall we.  What is a hero – snorts.

This movie came out in 1966 and starred Don Knotts as Luther Heggs.  It starts off with Luther driving down the street and hearing screams of, “Murder, murder” from a neighbor.  He takes pictures, gets the story from the neighbor and then goes to the local police station to report the crime.  While he’s reporting the crime, who walks in but the local ‘victim’.   The town thinks he’s a laughing joke.  And to top everything off, the full time writer for the paper, Ollie Weaver, lives in the same boarding house as he does and tells everyone over breakfast the next morning about what Luther did the night before.  This is also the time that you get to meet Ollie’s girlfriend, Alma Parker, who Luther has a secret crush with.

Poor Luther.  He works as a newspaper typesetter and wants to be a reporter so bad.  The staff of the newspaper want to increase sales and sees an opportunity for Luther to help out…even if it’s a joke  Ollie challenges Luther to spend the night in the local haunted Simmons mansion on the 20th anniversary of the murders that took place in the home.  The story was that Mr. Simmons murdered his wife and then jumped to his death from the organ loft of the home.  Legend says that you can still hear the ghost of Mr. Simmons still playing the organ at night, a haunting macabre tune.  Luther takes the bait and accepts the challenge of staying in the haunted house all by himself.

So the night comes and Luther goes into the haunted Simmons mansion.  He looks around and you visibly see that he’s scared by his shaking.  He settles down on the sofa in his sleeping bag for the night.  At midnight, it starts.  Luther hears the old organ begin to play from the loft.  He goes up to the loft area and sees the organ playing the haunting melody by itself.  He runs down the stairs and sees the painting of Mrs Simmons on the wall with hedge clippers sticking in it and ‘blood’ like material dripping out of it.  The newspaper starts flying off the shelves of Luther’s story of his night in the haunted Simmons mansion.  So much so that Nicholas Simmons (the nephew of the deceased couple) sues Luther for libel.  When it goes to court, the judge orders the courtroom to the Simmons mansion at midnight to prove Luther’s story.  Nothing happens and Luther looks like a fool.

Everyone leaves the house except for Luther who is moping around feeling sorry for himself.  Soon after, the organ begins to play the haunting macabre tune from the loft area again.  Luther runs upstairs and behold he sees Mr. Kelsey (who is the newspaper janitor) playing the old organ.

Mr. Kelsey and Luther talk about what happened and guess what?  They confront Nicholas Simmons and we learn that he was the one that killed his aunt and uncle and have been trying to cover the story all of these years.  How did he get away with the murders you ask?  There was a secret passage from the study up to the organ loft that had been his alibi.  Mr. Kelsey knew the secret and wanted Luther to be the one to open the case wide open.  Just by luck, Luther knocks out Nicholas Simmons with a body slam and becomes the local hero.

And yes.  Luther even got a girl out of the ordeal.  He marries his secret crush, Alma Parker.  As they say their “I do’s”, the organ starts playing all by itself the haunting macabre tune that was being played in the Simmons mansion.

It’s a great movie, one that is watched many times here at the Hotel Thompson.

 

31 Days of Spook – Oakland Cemetery

 I thought it was time to walk through a cemetery with you once again.  Today, I’m going to focus on one close to home – the historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia.  Oakland Cemetery was bought in 1850 and was originally named Atlanta Graveyard or City Burial Place.  It was renamed to Oakland Cemetery in 1972.

Oakland Cemetery offers twilight tours of the cemetery – how scary huh?  And around this time of the year, the cemetery even offers what they call “Capturing the Spirit of Oakland Halloween Tours”.  What a way to catch some things that go bump in the night.  There are over 70,000 residents in over 40 acres that are just dying to meet you whether you have a guided tour or walk the cemetery by yourself… if you’re brave enough.

A lot of the history of this wonderful cemetery centers around the Civil War.  There have been stories in the Confederate portion of the cemetery of hearing names being called as if in a roll call.  But to look around, there is no one living there, just the statue of a lion guarding the unknown Confederate dead and he’s not talking.

Often the guides at the cemetery will tell you that people actually die three times.  Once on their last breath, once when they are laid to rest and once when they are no longer remembered.  Sounds just like a situation for a few people to come out and be remembered, doesn’t it?  So the next time you’re in the area, drop by for a visit.  I’ve heard they’re always looking for a good soul to fright.

There are lots of famous people buried here in Oakland.  Mom took this photograph not too long ago.  Do you recognize the name?