Haunted Arkansas Mountain

Fayetteville Confederate Cemetery

On a gentle. wooded ridge of the Ozarks overlooking the town of Fayetteville,  Arkansas is the Fayetteville Confederate Cemetery, the final resting place for hundreds of men who gave their lives during Civil War battles in the northwest part of the state. Officially listed as East Mountain, the locals call the ridge Ghost Mountain. Not as famous as other battle sites like Gettysburg, Manassas, or Vicksburg, this was nonetheless one of the most violent and desperately contested sites of the war.  

The men's original burial places were where they fell when after the battle, soldiers of the victorious side or civilians from the area hurriedly interred the bodies in shallow, makeshift graves trying to prevent disease and the stench of decay. In 1878, the Southern Memorial Association of Washington County established the cemetery and began the process of exhuming the bodies from the area. The Confederates were buried here and the fallen Union soldiers were interred in the Fayetteville National Cemetery.

There are a number of homes just down the hill from the cemetery and the residents often report seeing unusual lights floating along the ridge. There are also numerous reports by residents and visitors alike of strange anomalies showing up in photographs taken within the cemetery. Even more famous though, is the legend of the Burning Bride of Ghost Hollow.

Directly across the slender dirt road from the Confederate cemetery is a much smaller cemetery, The Walker Cemetery is a family burial plot of land much smaller than its neighbor. Here lies the body of David Walker. In the 1860s, he was an Arkansas state senator, three times a state supreme court justice, one of the founders of the University of Arkansas, and served as a colonel in the Confederate army during the war. He was married to Jane Lewis Washington, a third-cousin of George Washington. Buried here next to him are his parents and a few of his close relatives.  

In 1872, Judge Walker had a large, 2-story brick house built for his daughter and her husband as a wedding present. It still stands just a little ways away from the family cemetery. Soon after the happy couple moved in though, strange things began to happen. Mostly small things, items disappearing then reappearing several days later, unexplained "moaning" noises, doors slamming closed for no reason. Then the couple became aware they could no longer find hired help. When the last housemaid quit,  they inquired to learn why nobody would work for them. They learned the African-American community considered the home haunted because of a horrible accident that happened there years before. 

Shortly after the Civil War ended in 1865, a man and his fiancé moved to Fayetteville from Fort Smith trying to start a new life after his hard service in the Confederate army.  They constructed a small home on the exact same spot of land as the Walker-built house. They were married in the house one cold winter evening and after the guests left, the bride of one hour, still wearing her wedding dress, leaned over the fireplace to stir the fire. A spark popped onto her dress and set it ablaze. Running and screaming hysterically out of the house, she ran down the ridge and, having ran through the grounds which would later become the Walker and Confederate cemeteries, she fell down and died in agony. From that day on, there have been reports of people seeing her apparition running through both cemeteries and hearing her screams as she over and over, relives her tragic wedding night.

Unfortunately, more tragedy plagued Ghost Mountain. In 1932, a family lived in a small log cabin located near the cemeteries. One night, the husband came home very drunk to his wife who was caring for a sick infant. The baby cried incessantly no matter what the mother tried and the husband, incensed that he couldn't sleep because of it, suddenly grabbed the baby, stumbled outside and threw the baby down the water well. The wife went into hysterics, grabbed the well rope and jumped into the well to save the child. The drunken father picked up a nearby ax and chopped the rope, leaving his wife and child in the well to die. It was several days later when his employer came to investigate why he had not been to work. Seeing the dangling, chopped well rope, he looked down and saw in the dim light, the floating bodies. It is assumed the husband fled the area as he has never been found. 

Some say the stories are just myths, there's nothing strange about East Mountain. Others insist the stories are not myths. One thing that is for certain, to this day, the stories remain a source of fear for those living on and around Ghost Mountain.

What Happened to the Children?

Fayetteville, West Virginia was a small, quiet town on Christmas Eve, 1945. On that night however, it would be the site of a tragic mystery, a mystery that still has not been solved. The night before Christmas, George and Jennie Sodder and nine of their 10 children went to sleep in their 2-story home (one son was away in the Army) looking forward to the next day when there would be gifts given and plenty of good food eaten. Around 1 a.m. though, a fire broke out. George, Jennie and four of their children escaped, but the other five were never seen again. 

The 5 missing children

George Sodder was born Giorgio Soddu in Tula, Sardinia in 1895, and immigrated to the United States in 1908. He found work on the Pennsylvania railroads, carrying water and supplies to the laborers, and after a few years moved to Smithers, West Virginia. Smart and ambitious, he worked as a truck driver until he had saved enough to launch his own successful trucking company. One day he walked into a local store and met Jennie Cipriani, who had come over from Italy when she was 3.

Jennie Sodder

They fell in love and soon married. Between 1923 and 1943, they had 10 children and settled in Fayetteville, an Appalachian town with a small but active Italian immigrant community. The Sodders became one of the most respected middle-class families in the area. 

George held strong opinions about business, current events, and politics, and did not hesitate to make his opinions known. In April 1945, communist partisans had killed fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, which left the Italians in Fayetteville highly divided. Supporters of Mussolini were outraged. George held strong antifascist views about Mussolini and had engendered bitter distrust amongst those of his fellow Italian immigrants who had loved the Italian leader. In the weeks before the fire, a few strange encounters took place. An unknown man approached George while at his home looking for hauling work. After telling the man that he didn't need any workers, the man looked over at the fuse box on the outside wall of the house and said, "That's going to cause a fire someday." Although very odd, George dismissed the comment since he had just had the whole house upgraded and rewired before adding new appliances and the power supply company had checked the work and everything had passed inspection.

A week before the fire, a salesman had tried to sell life insurance to George and Jennie. When they refused, the salesman got very upset and as he walked away, turned back and shouted, "Your goddamn house is going up in smoke and your children are going to be destroyed! You, Mr. Sodder, are going to be paid for the dirty remarks you have been making about Mussolini."

A few days before the fire, John (at 23, the oldest son at home) saw a suspicious car parked along Highway 21 for several days in a row. An unknown man inside the car seemed to be watching the younger Sodder children closely as they returned home from school.

The afternoon before the fire, the oldest daughter, Marion, had brought home some toys from the dime-store where she worked and gave them to the younger kids as small Christmas Eve gifts. At 10:30, George and Jennie went to their bedroom, carrying 3-year-old Sylvia with them. Jennie allowed the other children to stay up to play with their new toys for a while but reminded them that before they went to bed, they had to shut the chicken coop, feed the cows, close all the window shades, lock the doors and turn out the lights. 

Around 12:30 Christmas morning, the jangling ring of the telephone broke the quiet night. Jennie got out of bed and walked into the hallway to answer it. An unfamiliar female voice asked for an unfamiliar name. There was loud laughter and glasses clinking in the background. Jennie said, “You have the wrong number,” and heard the woman laughing before she hung up. As she was going back to bed, she noted that all of the downstairs lights were still on, the curtains were open, and the front door was unlocked. She saw Marion asleep on the sofa in the living room and assumed that the other kids were upstairs in bed. She turned out the lights, closed the curtains, locked the door, and returned to her room. A few minutes later, she had just begun to fall back asleep when she heard a loud bang on the roof and then a rolling noise. She wondered about it for a few seconds, but not hearing anything else, she fell back asleep. About an hour later though, she was roused once again, this time by heavy smoke billowing into her room.

George grabbed baby Sylvia in his arms and shouted for everyone to get up and get out of the house. With Jennie, they ran to the living room and pulled Marion outside. John and George also managed to escape from the burning house with singed hair, but there were still five children unaccounted for. George ran back into the house and called upstairs, but there was no answer. He started to run up the stairs, but by then, the fire had engulfed the stairway and upper landing. While her husband was frantically trying to get to the children, Jennie ran back inside to the phone to call the fire department. It wouldn't work though and the heat forced her back out. She then sent Marion to a neighbor's house to call the fire department.

Running back outside, George tried to save them by breaking a window to re-enter the house, slicing a large chunk of flesh from his arm. He could see nothing through the smoke and fire, which by now had swept through all of the downstairs rooms: living and dining room, kitchen, office, and his and Jennie’s bedroom. He figured Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty still had to be upstairs, cowering in two bedrooms on either end of the hallway, separated by a staircase that was now engulfed in flames.

He raced around to the other side of the house, hoping to reach them through the upstairs windows, but the ladder he always kept propped against the house was missing (it was later found lying in a drainage ditch 50 yards from the house). He then tried to drive one of his two coal trucks up to the house and climb atop it to reach the windows. But even though they’d functioned perfectly the day before, neither would start now. He tried to scoop water from a rain barrel but it was frozen solid. Five of his children were stuck somewhere inside the flaming fire and he couldn't do a thing about it.

When Marion arrived at the neighbor's home, she tried to call the Fayetteville Fire Department but couldn’t get any operator response. A neighbor who saw the blaze made a call from a nearby tavern, but again no operator responded. Frustrated, the neighbor drove into town and tracked down Fire Chief F.J. Morris, who initiated Fayetteville’s version of a fire alarm: a “phone tree” system where one firefighter phoned another, who phoned another. The fire department was only two and a half miles away but the crew didn’t arrive until 8 a.m., by which point the Sodders’ home had been reduced to nothing more than a smoking pile of ash.

Memorial to the 5 children
at the site of the fire

George and Jeannie assumed that five of their children were dead, but a brief search of the grounds on Christmas Day turned up no trace of remains. Chief Morris suggested the blaze had been hot enough to completely cremate the bodies. A state police inspector combed the rubble and attributed the fire to faulty wiring. Five days later, George covered the basement with five feet of dirt, intending to preserve the site as a memorial to the dead children. The coroner’s office issued five death certificates just before the new year, attributing the causes to “fire or suffocation.”

But soon, the Sodders began to wonder if their children were still alive.

The Sodders planted flowers across the space where their house had stood and began to stitch together those odd happenings leading up to the fire. Jennie couldn’t understand how five children could perish in a fire and leave no bones or any trace of anything. She conducted experiments, burning animal bones, chicken bones, beef joints, pork chop bones, to see if the fire consumed them. Each time she was left with a heap of charred bones. Remnants of various household items had been found in the burned-out basement, still identifiable. It is totally implausible that a fire that left identifiable household items would leave no trace of five children. An employee at a crematorium informed her that bones remain after bodies are burned for two hours at 2,000 degrees. Their house was destroyed in 45 minutes.

They wondered about the telephone not working when Jennie tried to call the fire department. They hired a telephone repairman to investigate and he told the Sodders their lines appeared to have been cut, not burned. They realized that if the fire had been electrical—the result of “faulty wiring,” as the official reported stated—then the power would have been dead, so how to explain the lighted downstairs rooms? A day after the fire, a man came forward claiming he saw some man at the fire scene taking a block and tackle used for removing car engines; could he be the reason George’s trucks refused to start? One day, while the family was visiting the site, Sylvia found a hard rubber object in the yard. Jennie recalled hearing the hard thud on the roof, the rolling sound. George concluded it was a napalm bomb of the type used in warfare.

Flyer posted offering a 
reward for information

Several days later, after the sad story of the five dead children on Christmas Day appeared in the papers, the reports of sightings began. A woman claimed to have seen the missing children peering from a passing car while the fire was burning. A woman operating a tourist stop 50 miles west of Fayetteville said she saw the children the morning after the fire. “I served them breakfast,” she told police. “There was a car with Florida license plates at the tourist court, too.” A woman at a Charleston hotel who saw the children's photo's in the paper said she had seen four of the five a week after the fire. “The children were accompanied by two women and two men, all of Italian extraction,” she said in a statement. “I do not remember the exact date. However, the entire party did register at the hotel and stayed in a large room with several beds. They registered about midnight. I tried to talk to the children in a friendly manner, but the men appeared hostile and refused to allow me to talk to these children…. One of the men looked at me in a hostile manner; he turned around and began talking rapidly in Italian. Immediately, the whole party stopped talking to me. I sensed that I was being frozen out and so I said nothing more. They left early the next morning.”

In 1947, George and Jennie sent a letter about the case to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and received a reply from J. Edgar Hoover: “Although I would like to be of service, the matter related appears to be of local character and does not come within the investigative jurisdiction of this bureau.” Hoover’s agents said they would assist if they could get permission from the local authorities, but the Fayetteville police and fire departments refused the offer, saying they did not need the help.

The Sodders then turned to a private investigator, C.C. Tinsley, who discovered that the insurance salesman who had threatened George was a member of the coroner’s jury that deemed the fire accidental. Other than that news, Mr. Tinsley was unable to find any other details.

Over the next few years, the tips and leads continued to come in. George saw a newspaper photo of schoolchildren in New York City and was convinced that one of them was his daughter Betty. He drove to Manhattan in search of the child, but her parents refused to speak to him or let him see their daughter. They threatened to call the police if he didn't leave them alone. In August 1949, the Sodders brought in a Washington, D.C. pathologist named Oscar B. Hunter and had him thoroughly exam the site of their burned house. The excavation was thorough, uncovering several small objects: damaged coins, a partly burned dictionary and several shards of vertebrae. Hunter sent the bones to the Smithsonian Institution, which issued the following report:

"The human bones consist of four lumbar vertebrae belonging to one individual. Since the transverse recesses are fused, the age of this individual at death should have been 16 or 17 years. The top limit of age should be about 22 since the centra, which normally fuse at 23, are still unfused. On this basis, the bones show greater skeletal maturation than one could expect for a 14-year-old boy (the oldest missing Sodder child)."

The report also said the vertebrae showed no evidence of exposure to fire and “it is very strange that no other bones were found in the allegedly careful evacuation of the basement of the house.” Noting that the house reportedly burned for only about half an hour or so, it said that “one would expect to find the full skeletons of the five children, rather than only four vertebrae.” The bones, the report concluded, must have been in the supply of dirt George used to fill in the basement to create the memorial for his children. Several months later, the bones were identified as belonging to a 22-year-old man whose grave several miles away had been opened by graverobbers looking for an expensive watch and ring the young man was rumored to have been buried with.

George & Jennie in front of the 
billboard they erected

After the governor and the State Police Superintendent declared the case closed,  George and Jennie erected a billboard along Route 16 and passed out flyers offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of their children. When nothing came of it, they increased the amount to $10,000. A letter arrived from a woman in St. Louis saying the oldest girl, Martha, was in a convent there. Another tip came from Texas, where a patron in a bar overheard an incriminating conversation about a long-ago Christmas Eve fire in West Virginia. Someone in Florida claimed the children were staying with a distant relative of Jennie’s. George traveled the country to investigate each and every lead, always returning home without any answers.

In 1968, 23 years after the fire, Jennie found an envelope in the mailbox addressed only to her. It was postmarked in Kentucky but had no return address. Inside was a photo of a man in his mid-20s. On the back was a strange handwritten note which read: “Louis Sodder. I love brother Frankie. Ilil Boys. A90132 or 35.” She and George were astonished at the resemblance to their Louis, who was 9 at the time of the fire. Beyond the obvious similarities—dark curly hair, dark brown eyes—they both had the same straight, strong nose and the same upward tilt of the left eyebrow. They immediately hired a private detective and sent him to Kentucky. They never heard from him again.

Just before he died in 1968, George told a reporter, “Time is running out for us, but we only want to know. If they did die in the fire, we want to be convinced. Otherwise, we want to know what happened to them.” He died still hoping for a break in the case. Jennie erected a high privacy fence around her property and began adding rooms to her home, building layer after layer between her and the outside. Since the night of the fire, she only wore black clothing in a sign of mourning. She continued to do so until her own death in 1989. The billboard finally came down several years later. 

Her surviving children and grandchildren continued the investigation and came up with theories of their own: perhaps the local mafia had tried to recruit George and he declined. They tried to extort money from him and he refused. The children were kidnapped by someone they knew—someone who burst into the unlocked front door, told them about the fire and offered to take them someplace safe. They might not have survived the night. If they had and if they lived for decades, if it really was Louis in that photograph, they failed to contact their parents only because they wanted to protect them.

George and Jennie swore they would look for their missing children until they both died. And so they did. Several years after the fire, the FBI finally began a federal investigation but closed the case after 2 years with no additional information being found. As of this writing, the daughter of Marion still hopes the case can be solved. A large group of internet sleuths continues to investigate, but even they say this might be one that will never be solved and nobody will ever know for sure just what really happened to the children.

The Goliad Ghosts

The Presidio in Goliad

After the fall of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas in 1836, the victorious Mexican forces continued to march east toward the Presidio in Goliad where Colonel James Fannin commanded 400 Texas men. The Texans were ordered to move to Victoria, a more defendable position on the other side of the Guadalupe River. During the move though they ran into the main body of the Mexican troops while crossing an open prairie. 

After fending off four separate attacks on the first day, the Texans spent that night digging trenches. In the morning, however, they found they were now totally surrounded by the enemy. Almost out of ammunition, Fannin asked for a parley to prevent his troops from being massacred. General Urrea, commander of the Mexican forces, promised the Texans would be treated as prisoners of war and given clemency. 

Upon surrender, the Texans were marched back to the Presidio at Goliad and placed under the watchful eyes of Nicolas de la Portilla and his detachment of men while Urrea and his remaining troops continued their march south. However, Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, was determined to fight a war of extermination and ordered Portilla to execute the prisoners. Having conflicting orders from General Urrea and General Santa Anna, Portilla chose to follow Santa Anna's orders.

Inside the walls of the Presidio where the
wounded were killed

On March 27, the prisoners were divided into quarters. While the sick and wounded remained in the chapel, the other three groups were escorted on different roads out of town. The three groups were told they were on missions to gather wood, drive cattle or sail to safety in New Orleans. When they were ordered to halt a half-mile from the fort, however, the Texans realized their fates. The Mexican guards opened fire as some of the men began running for their lives. Those not killed by gunshots were slaughtered with bayonets.

Back at the presidio, the Mexicans stood the wounded against the chapel wall and executed them. The wounded who couldn't stand were shot in their beds. Fannin, who had been shot in the thigh during the original engagement, was the last to be killed. His three dying wishes were to be shot in the chest, given a Christian burial, and have his watch sent to his family. Instead, Portilla shot Fannin in the face, burned his body with the others, and kept the timepiece as a war prize. In all, nearly 350 men were killed at Goliad.

Today, almost 185 years later, the old presidio and its adjacent Chapel of our Lady of Loreto still stand. Given the horrific events that happened within and around the site, is it any wonder the walls sometimes echo with the mournful sounds of spirits returning from that troubled and turbulent time? 

Visitors often report feeling "cold spots" and uneasy feelings as they walk around the grounds where Fannin and his men were executed. In 1992, a man named Jim reported strange goings-on. As a former deputy sheriff and a security guard for a number of years, Jim was not a man easily frightened or prone to make up wild stories. Hired for a few nights to watch over some equipment at the presidio that was to be used for the Cattle Baron's Ball, he expected quiet routine nights. On his first night though, just before midnight, the silence was broken by the "eerie, shrill cries of nearly a dozen terrified infants." He swore the sounds indicated "pain and suffering." Although understandably frightened, he tried to find where the sounds were coming from. After several long minutes, he finally determined they were coming from one of the dozen or so unmarked graves that are located near the Chapel of Our Lady of Loreto.

As he shined his flashlight on the spot, the cries abruptly stopped but were immediately replaced by the singing of a women's choir. It sounded like it was coming from the back wall of the old fort, but the beam of his flashlight revealed nothing there. After two or three minutes, the singing stopped and silence returned for the rest of the night. When Jim reported his experience, he was teased by his co-workers, but he is convinced what he saw and heard was real and besides, he is not the only person to report strange things in and around the presidio.

The chapel

Numerous people have reported seeing a strange, 4-foot-tall friar who suddenly appears by the double doors leading into the chapel. His robes are black, tied around his waist with a rope and his face is concealed with a hood. He then walks barefooted to each corner of the church and seems to bless it before walking to the center of the quadrangle and begins to pray in Latin. 

A woman in a white dress has been reported kneeling and crying by the graves of the children. When seen, she then turns and looks directly at the person before gliding over to a wall and vanishing. A beautiful soprano voice is often heard emanating from one particular room, but upon investigation, there is nobody in the small space. Visitors who stay late often come back from the fort and comment to the staff about the historical reenactors even though there are no reenactors on the property that day. 

It seems there are many restless spirits here. Who are the crying babies? Are they the little lost souls of pioneer infants killed by Indians in a raid or was there an epidemic that took their too-short lives. The woman in white - is her own child buried in one of the unmarked graves? Why does the short friar keep returning? Is his soul in turmoil over so many brave men who were brutally executed? Whose souls are eternally singing beautiful hymns in a choir, unable to leave this chapel? Caught in a timeless web, so many lost souls searching, sorrowing, singing, praying, unable to let go of the life they briefly lived in a little town named Goliad.

An American Vampire

Mercy Brown's headstone

Mercy Lena Brown, perhaps America's most famous vampire, lies in her grave within the quiet, rural Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Exeter, Rhode Island. Her tragic tale is the best-documented case in America of the exhumation of a corpse in order to perform rituals to banish an undead manifestation.

In 1886, Mercy's mother, Mary Eliza, died of tuberculosis, a devastating and much-feared disease called "consumption" at that time. Mary's oldest daughter, Mary Olive, died of the same disease in 1888. In 1891, both Mercy and her brother, Edwin, became sick with "consumption." In accordance with superstitious beliefs, multiple deaths within an individual family in a relatively short time was due to undead activity. This was particularly true of tuberculosis since a common symptom of the disease is significant weight loss, giving the impression that life was slowly being sucked out of the patient. It was thought the undead were desperate to live again thus they drained the life out of their loved ones.  

The crypt where Mercy's body was kept

Mercy died on January 17, 1892, just 19 years old. Due to the ground being frozen in the middle of winter, her body was stored in an above-ground crypt until it was possible to give her a proper burial when the ground thawed. Family members, nearby villagers and the local doctor and priest pressured Mary's father,  George, to allow the exhumation of Mary Eliza and Mary Olive and to open Mercy's coffin as they believed one of them must be a vampire and was the cause of Edwin's continued illness. 

On March 17, two months after Mercy's death, two coffins were pried from the frozen ground. The bodies of Mary Eliza and Mary Olive both showed the expected levels of decomposition, but when the coffin of Mercy was opened, the body exhibited almost no decay and, in fact, looked exactly as she had the day she died. After being thawed near a fire, further examination showed liquid blood to be in her heart. Her lack of decomposition was no doubt due to her body being solidly frozen during the two months it had been stored in the crypt, but this was not understood at that time so it was taken as a sure sign that Mercy was undead and the agent for Edwin's illness.

As the superstitious beliefs dictated, Mercy's heart and liver were cut from her body, thoroughly burned and the ashes mixed with water. What remained of her body was then desecrated and placed back in her coffin lying face down. Edwin was made to drink the tonic in an effort to cure his illness and stop the influence of the undead. It didn't work. Edwin died two months later. Eventually, poor Mercy was buried where she now lies.

This unfortunate incident became known to Bram Stoker, the author of the novel Dracula. He based the novel's character Lucy Westenra on Mercy. It is also referred to in H. P. Lovecraft's The Shunned House. Today, visitors to Mercy's grave frequently leave hand-written notes, little trinkets, and plastic vampire teeth. Cemetery workers periodically remove them, only to have them re-stocked by later sightseers and curious visitors.

The Digitized Man

Joseph Jernigan's arrest photo

On August 5, 1993, a few minutes past midnight, Joseph Paul Jernigan lay strapped down on a gurney in the execution chamber of the Huntsville State Prison in Texas. Ten years ago, he had been convicted of murder and sentenced to die. All of his appeals had been denied and he knew he would soon be dead. 

Before the deadly needle was pushed into his arm, he confessed that he was indeed guilty of the vicious murder of a 75-year-old man. While he and an accomplice were in the process of stealing a microwave oven, the homeowner unexpectedly returned. Even though the old, infirm gentleman offered no danger to the thieves, Jernigan, afraid he would identify them, repeatedly beat him in the head with a heavy ashtray, then stabbed him multiple times in the heart with a butcher knife he found in the kitchen and then blew a large hole in his chest with a shotgun blast.

Like most condemned prisoners, Jernigan found religion as his death date drew near. A priest convinced him to repay society by donating his body to science. As he lay on the gurney, he had no idea what was to become of his donated corpse, but at that very moment, a team of researchers was eagerly waiting.

After execution, his body was prepared for travel, air freighted to a lab in Colorado (postage, $201.88) and exactly 8 hours later, became the property of The Center for Human Simulation. The goal of the organization was to digitize an entire cadaver into a versatile, medically accurate, three-dimensional model of human anatomy. Joseph Paul Jernigan would become the new definition of man.

Jernigan's thorax

Sparing you the very gross process it took to render, the whole of Jernigan's body (except for a missing appendix and one testicle) was cut into pieces and then eventually sliced into thousands of individual slices thinner than a piece of pre-wrapped cheese. It took 9 months to complete. Each slice was then photographed and subjected to CT and MRI scans. 

Once this process was completed, he was reconstituted into 15 gigabytes of data and made available on the internet. Once there, the convicted murderer was reincarnated into the Visible Human, an interactive model that can be explored by anyone with a web browser. 

Joseph Paul Jernigan now lives on via computers all over the world and anyone who cares to, can enjoy fly-throughs of his body - his bones, his brain, his heart, and even his one testicle. Few, however, know they are actually looking at a convicted murderer.

Anna and the Sailor

Savannah, Georgia is often called "The Jewel of the South" and its rich history is filled with as much tragedy as glory. Many of its buildings have a reputation for being haunted by specters, some of them are even known by name. Anna Power is one of these poor souls perhaps destined to remain chained to a particular place forever. That place is known as the 17 Hundred 90 Inn.

The inn was originally built in 1790 as a boardinghouse. Savannah was a popular fishing and shipping port with a rowdy reputation. This made it a popular hangout for sailors, pirates, thieves, and lonesome people looking for companionship.  Anna Power was a young woman, just 17 years old, but she was known for enjoying the rough and rowdy life in the saloons by the port. She lived with her very religious parents in a respectable part of town, but  the neighbors began openly discussing Anna's loose ways and questionable morality. Her family felt she was a disgrace and when she turned up pregnant, they kicked her out of the house.

Anna came to the boarding house to live with the hard-drinking sailor she had lain with. The sailor she thought was her true love told her he was not ready to settle down with a wife and a baby. No amount of pleading, begging, or crying changed his mind. He had other plans and they did not include Anna and a baby. He signed on as a crewman on a ship leaving on the evening's high tide, told Anna he would not be coming back and left her there in the little room in the boarding house. Anna watch her lover's ship as it sailed away from the harbor and as it disappeared over the horizon, dark despair enveloped her. She threw herself out of the window and ended her suffering.

However, that wasn't end of Anna Power. Shortly thereafter, the next man who rented the same room told of how he was awakened from a dead sleep in the middle of the night by fingers caressing his face and a hand tugging at his blanket. He lit a lamp beside the bed only to find nobody in bed with him. He looked around the room in confusion and saw a thin streak of mist by the window. Before his astonished eyes, the mist turned into the shape of a young woman who looked at him for a second before jumping out of the window.

 Eerie occurrences have continued in the room since. And not just in that room either. Anna has been seen roaming the halls, often playfully coming up behind guests and giving their hair a little tug and then, with a fading giggle, vanishing as they turn around.  Guests and staff have told of flickering lights and mysterious footsteps. Sadly, an unseen baby crying at the top of the stairs seems to be Anna's unborn child. 

As recently as 2013, a gentleman reported he and his wife got into an argument while staying in "Anna's" room. The argument became so heated the wife banished her husband to sleep on the small couch in the room. Fast asleep, he was awakened by his wife whom evidently wanted to kiss and make up. The next morning, he arose from the couch and thanked her for being so understanding and for the wonderful intimate time she had given him. His wife simply glared at him in angry confusion and asked him what he was talking about. The man swore the encounter wasn't a dream.

Over the years, Anna has proven to have a sense of humor. While guests are away from their rooms, she sometimes locks doors - from the inside. She evidently also likes to steal things. Numerous times guests have come to the front desk to complain of someone stealing their wallets or keys only to be astonished when upon returning to their room, the missing item has reappeared sitting in plain sight on a table top. One thing Anna seems to enjoy stealing the most is underwear, especially women's. Nobody's unmentionables are safe as dozens of guest have told of their missing personal garments. Bewilderingly, most of the purloined panties are later found, often after the guests have abruptly left, in planter boxes around the inn.

There's really no rhyme or reason for Anna's appearances. She simply seems to come and go as she pleases. Most of the fun happens in what is now Room 204, the room where Anna lived and loved. If you happen to be lucky enough to book this room, be sure to watch your undies.

Grave with a View

At the Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, Vermont, there is a mound of earth that at first glance seems to be just a landscaping error. If you make your way to the top of the mound though, you will see a small window embedded in the ground. Brush the dirt and leaves away from that window and you will be staring face-to-face with a dead man.

In the late 1800s, Timothy Clark Smith was a world traveler with the U.S. Foreign Service. During his long career, he saw many hideous things and heard stories of terrible things some unlucky souls endured. Several of those stories were of people being buried alive. During those pre-embalming days, it wasn't as rare as you may think. Because of this, he developed a terrible fear of suffering the same fate. 

On Halloween night in 1893, Mr. Smith suddenly died in Middlebury, Vermont of unknown reasons. His corpse was transported to New Haven's Evergreen Cemetery for burial. There, a special grave had been prepared for him. In that strange mound of earth, Mr. Smith was buried with his face positioned beneath a cement tube that led to the surface. The tube was covered with a 14x14 inch of plate glass. In the corpse's hand they placed a bell that he could ring should he wake up and find himself the victim of a premature burial. 

If you visit the cemetery, keep very quiet... and listen.