The Haunting of the USS Lexington

Perhaps the most haunted ship in the United States is the USS Lexington (CV-16), a World War II aircraft carrier that was decommissioned in 1991 and now serves as a floating museum in Corpus Christi, Texas.  Launched straight into the war against Japan in the Pacific in 1943, "The Lady Lex" as she was nicknamed, and her crew fought in 21 of the 24 major battles between 1943 and the end of the war in 1945. On four separate occasions, the Japanese announced they had sunk her after launching massive attacks against the ship, but despite battle damage, she returned each time to exact revenge. Because of this and with her hull painted in a blue camouflage scheme, the Japanese began calling her "The Blue Ghost." Having been involved in so many major battles, almost 500 sailors lost their lives while serving on the mighty ship.

 When people are suddenly killed in battle, their spirits are sometimes not ready to leave this world yet and they stay in a place that is comfortable and familiar, perhaps to continue on what they were doing before their sudden death. When people die violently, they sometimes relive the time beforehand, experiencing what they felt and thought before they died. With so much violent death, is it any wonder the "Lady Lex" is definitely considered haunted?

In 1943, a Japanese kamikaze crashed into the engine room, causing massive damage and setting it on fire. 50 men were either killed outright or burned to death. Many visitors, most unaware of what happened in that spot, have told of hearing screams of men in pain. The screams seem to be coming from the walls. Other, luckier visitors, report having enjoyed the detailed lecture given by a nice young man in period uniform about how the engines worked to power the ship. They say he claims to be an engine room operator. But there have never been any staff or volunteer members in period uniform giving lectures in the engine room.

A Japanese bomb dropped from a dive bomber exploded in the switch room, causing numerous deaths and horrible injuries. The room has been closed to visitors because so many started to become sick and feel very uneasy and sad while in the area. One of these people was Donna LaCroix when she and television's Ghost Hunters team investigated the Lexington. They pronounced the ship to be one of the most haunted locations they had ever investigated.

Numerous guests over the years have reported getting lost within the many confusing corridors inside the ship only to be led up to the hanger bay by a friendly young man dressed in Navy dungarees named Charley. After leading them out of the maze of corridors and up the stairs, he opens a final door and tells them to "just step through here and you'll be safe." After the last person steps into the hanger bay, the group often turns to say thank you but finds he has vanished.

All of the apparitions seem to be friendly, helpful, and non-threatening with the exception of one. People who have seen him manifest say he is wearing a uniform that identifies him as a Chief Petty Officer. Although he has never harmed anyone, he is not friendly, scowling at the living and mumbling something in an unpleasant gravely voice. Of course, on a ship of this size with this many men, not all deaths were caused by combat. Sometimes if a person died from an accident caused by his own lack of attention, the entity is very angry at himself and won’t cross over, choosing to stew emotionally in this world. Ship's records from 1945 do indeed record a Chief Petty Officer who inadvertently backed up into a plane's spinning propeller which resulted in his grizzly death. 

Security officers very often report hearing running footsteps in the hanger bay after the ship has been closed and there is nobody else there. Several years ago, an officer said he didn't see anything on the security cameras and went to see what the noise was. The next day, while giving his report, he was white as a sheet when he said he witnessed "shadow figures running in chaos." When he finished his report, he handed in his resignation and has never been heard from again. One of the paranormal investigators said he thinks what the officers are seeing are sailors running for cover after the ship was hit by a torpedo in late 1943.

"They're constantly doing the same thing over and over again ... maintaining the ship," he said of the ghosts he suspects roam the ship. "This was their home and they don't want to go anywhere else."

Hundreds of personal experiences have been reported by staff and visitors over the years that this aircraft carrier has been docked at Corpus Christi. Many have also been reported by paranormal investigators. To visit one of the most haunted ships in the world and perhaps meet Charley, the angry Chief Petty Officer, or any number of other entities, head to Corpus Christi, Texas. The ship is permanently docked just across the bay at 2914 North Shoreline Boulevard.

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.

Partners Forever

The Texas Panhandle plains somewhere 
close to where this story took place.

I heard a story, a disturbing story, of two men, buffalo hunting partners, who lived in what is now Dickens County, Texas in the mid-1860s. They stumbled across a spring that trickled out cool, clear water in a little grove of hardy mesquite trees in the lonely land a few miles east of the city we know as Lubbock. Other than this little patch of land, the area was an unforgiving, gritty vast nothingness of almost constant wind - the kind of place that by night, becomes a domain where the wolf cries to the moon and restless ghosts stalk the harsh, lonely dark. 

Here, Bill and Ike agreed, was a perfect place where they could find peace and solitude. They built a small, crude cabin, a dugout more than a cabin really, but it was good enough for these hardy men who were used to sleeping in the open with nothing but beans, hardtack and buffalo meat to eat and buffalo robes to keep them warm on a long winter's night. When Bill found a cottonwood sapling growing among the mesquite, he dug it up and planted it a few yards from their cabin. They filed homestead papers and named their land "Cottonwood Ranch."

They dreamed of making their claim a real ranch, raising cattle on a vast horizon-to-horizon spread. Month after month eventually turned into years, but the men who had been partners for so long they often enjoyed long periods of silence since each knew what the other was thinking, continued to dream and work to improve their land for their some-day cattle to get fat on the prairie grass. They saw eye-to-eye on everything, never argued, and knew only their dreams of what was to be.

The years went by and the cottonwood tree had grown much larger. Other ranches had sprung up around them, large ranches with funding from foreign investors. Land that had cost them nothing was now worth money! The closest ranch, the Big Sur, had made it known they wanted to buy Bill and Ike's property as they wanted to expand and needed the water from the dependable little spring. They offered more money than the partners had ever grubbed out despite all their backbreaking work and effort.

One night in the cabin's flickering lamplight, Bill announced he wanted to sell out and go back east or at least to a decent-sized city like Dodge or Kansas City. "What?! Are you crazy?" Ike exploded. "No way are we selling out now!" But Bill just sat on his stool, calmly looking up at the sagging roof. Ike blew out the lamp and rolled up in his bedroll, but sleep wouldn't come and he knew a change had come. Something terrible had happened to their partnership.

In the morning, Ike confronted his partner. They must hold onto the Cottonwood Ranch no matter what. Too much work and effort had gone into it and besides, what could be better than the life they had? "A good place to live with a roof that doesn't leak on us while we sleep, a place with good walls that hold off the cold wind, whiskey, and women. That's what would be better. We must sell," replied Bill. "We don't leave," said Ike. "I intend to," said Bill as he walked away. No more words were spoken. In the silence, both men knew the break was complete.

As the days passed, the now uncomfortable silence split the break even wider. They continued to work and do the things that must be done, but Ike and Bill were sullen strangers now. The cabin became claustrophobic and the open range became oppressive.

East of Lubbock - the Cottonwood
Ranch was somewhere near here.

It was a late fall morning when the men were working together to remove the stump of a dead tree they had chopped down to lay aside firewood for the coming winter. Ike was leaning on a large ax, taking a break from chopping up the wood while Bill worked at the stump, digging with a shovel. Without looking up, Bill broke the silence by saying, "I don't intend enduring another winter here. I'm leaving in the morning." Without thinking, crying out in rage, Ike swung the ax. 

Bill's scream was suddenly cut off. Seconds later, Ike was aghast at the scene in front of him. He grabbed the shovel and in a daze, walked to the little grove of mesquite trees and dug a shallow grave. When he was finished, he dragged Bill's body to the hole and laid it in. He went back, retrieved Bill's severed head and threw it in the grave atop the body. With tears in his eyes, he completed the burial of his partner.

In the little cabin that night, Ike sat staring at Bill's empty chair. He was startled to hear someone softly calling his name, but he knew it must be the wind. He had just blown out the lamp for the night when he heard outside the familiar sounds of shuffling footsteps across the hard ground. He ran to open the door, but there was only the dark and the faint shadow of Bill's cottonwood tree swaying in the eternal wind.  

Ike couldn't sleep that night and when the dark began turning to light, he saddled his horse and rode toward the horizon. Passing the grove of trees and Bill's resting place, Ike heard the unmistakable sound of hoofbeats and the creaking of a familiar leather saddle following him. The sound seemed to fill the air as a chill went down his spine, but forcing himself to look back, there was, of course, nothing there.

Over the next days and weeks, it seemed Bill followed Ike wherever he went. It didn't matter which trail he took, the sounds of creaking leather and hoofbeats remained right behind him. At night, Ike began drinking more and more whiskey, trying to quiet the voice in the wind calling his name. And then the whiskey didn't work anymore. One night, when the footsteps and the dark and the voice in the wind became too much, Ike threw open the door and found Bill standing there in the doorway! Screaming, Ike fell back into the cabin as Bill calmly walked in and sat down in his seat. Ike knew he was going crazy, but maybe if he drank even more whiskey, he could pass out. He drank and drank some more, but he didn't pass out and Bill continued to sit in his chair, watching him. As much as a headless fellow can watch anyway.

When the sun came up in the morning, Bill seemed to disappear. Ike couldn't stand it anymore. Filled with fear and remorse, he rode into the little town that had grown up a few miles away. He told the sheriff what he had done, but the sheriff didn't believe him. You see, riders coming into town had for several months been telling of a fellow a few miles away who seemed to be crazy, always looking around and talking to himself. He never seemed to do any work; just kept piling stones up in a spot in a little grove of mesquite trees. The townspeople thought the man must have gone crazy living out there in all that open space with the unstopping wind. His partner must have left, unable to live with such a crazy person. One of these days soon, the sheriff thought, he would ride over there just to take a look around.

Eventually, the lawman did ride over to the poor Cottonwood Ranch. But it was too late. He found the rotting body of Ike hanging from a big cottonwood tree next to an old cabin. The sheriff felt bad. He should have locked up old Ike for his own safety. He cut down the body and buried it right there under the tree.

It was getting on dark when the sheriff finished the burying and headed home. As he rode, he could have sworn he heard a voice calling Ike's name, but he knew it was just the wind. A number of times he thought he heard the hoofbeats of a horse and rider following him. He looked back and thought he saw a shadow, but you know how a dark night can play tricks on your eyes. That's how he explained things to his wife when he arrived home and that's what he told all the riders who came into town later and talked of seeing a man hanging from a cottonwood by a rundown cabin a few miles out of town.

One of the roads I traveled to find the
Cottonwood Ranch

I wanted to see where the story took place so I drove out there. I asked around, but people claimed to never have heard the story or didn't seem to want to talk about it. A couple of old men I came across having coffee in a little cafe told me there was nothing to the story and nothing to see out there. But they also told me they don't know of anyone who goes out that way after dark. I followed the vague directions I got from them, but I never did find a big cottonwood tree with the rotted remains of a cabin next to it. I didn't stay around until it got dark. I wasn't afraid, not at all, but I had a nice, comfortable hotel room waiting for me in Lubbock... and why waste a good night's sleep?

Haunted Gettysburg

The Civil War battle that was fought at the small town of Gettysburg in July 1863 was the greatest conflict of the war. The fighting raged not only in the woods, fields, and hills around the town but up and down the streets and in the homes of the people who lived there. 

After three days of intense fighting with cannon, guns, and men often engaged in vicious, brutal, desperate hand-to-hand mortal combat, there were almost 7,100 dead, 34,000 wounded, and 11,000 missing (captured or dead with body not found). When both armies pulled back, they left behind streets and fields littered with the bodies of the dead slowly decaying in the heat of the Pennsylvania summer. The people of Gettysburg were left with thousands of wounded to attend to and homes and businesses were turned into field hospitals. One local woman recalled, "Wounded men of both armies were brought into our homes and laid side-by-side in the halls and rooms. Carpets were so saturated with blood as to be of no further use. Walls were hideously bloodstained as were books which were used as pillows for the suffering men. In the streets and fields, the rotting corpses, swollen to twice their original size, actually burst asunder. Outside a home, several human, or inhuman, corpses sat up against a fence, with arms extended into the air and faces hideous with something very like a fixed leer." There are still many places throughout the town of Gettysburg where spirits from the battle are said to linger: homes, shops, hotels, and restaurants are said to be infested with ghosts and the unexplained. 

People have on numerous occasions told of smelling peppermint in the air while walking around the area known as Cemetery Hill. Most have no idea that on the first day of the battle, the Confederates routed a large group of Northern soldiers who retreated through the town to a piece of higher ground where they made a desperate stand. The place where many of them died by the end of that day was Cemetery Hill. As the battles raged on for two more days, the bodies were left to rot in the hot July sun. After the battle was over, Gettysburg citizens had to retrieve and bury the decayed, rotting corpses. They were only able to withstand the awful stench by covering their noses with handkerchiefs containing pieces of peppermint. 

The small college now known as Gettysburg College is a quiet place today, but in 1863, the college campus found itself in the middle of the fighting. Consisting only of 3 buildings then, it was used as a field hospital for the wounded and dying. The buildings still bear the scars of fired bullets from those terrible three days. Constructed in 1837, Pennsylvania Hall, a large stately building with tall white columns was originally a dormitory. Today it houses the campus administration offices. The Confederates captured the building after a skirmish and used the tall cupola as a lookout as well as a field hospital. Men were stationed as lookouts and even General Lee himself climbed the stairs to the top in order to keep an eye on the progress of the battles. Students and staff alike have reported seeing the figures of soldiers pacing back and forth long after the building has been closed and deserted for the night. 

The terrible conditions of the field hospital are what have left the strongest impression on the old building. Many times people have reported hearing what sounds like men screaming. Most staff members refuse to work in the building after sundown. Two professors, both known to be honest, forthright, and avowed disbelievers of the supernatural, did work in the building late one night up on the 4th floor. When they entered the elevator to go down to the 1st-floor exit, the elevator for some reason passed by the first floor to the basement. The doors opened on a terrible scene. The basement storage room had vanished and in its place was the blood-spattered operating room during the battle. Wounded men were writhing in pain as doctors and orderlies in blood-soaked clothing operated on them with no anesthetic, dealing with bullet wounds by the preferred treatment of the time, amputation. Off to the side of the room was an area where men who could not be saved were laid, waiting to die. Next to the dying lay hundreds of amputated legs and arms. The professors said there was no sound, but in their heads, they could hear the horrible wails, groans, and screaming. They frantically punched the buttons of the elevator to shut the doors on the horrible scene, but they wouldn't close. Then, one of the doctors looked up after severing a leg and, while holding his saw in one hand and the amputated leg by the foot in the other, looked directly at the professors. He gestured for them to come assist in the operations that were taking place. The professors, frozen in fear, couldn't move. The doctor dropped the leg and his saw and began walking toward them. Mercifully, the elevator doors closed just before he reached them. The professors, although thoroughly shaken by their experience, continued to work in the building after that, but neither of them ever took the elevator again, preferring to exit the building by way of the stairs.

A widow lady by the name of Mary Thompson lived on a farm on the north side of Chambersburg Pike. During the battle, her home was used as headquarters by General Robert E. Lee. The house was also used as a field hospital for the wounded. The dead were moved into a barn across a dirt path from the house until they could be given a proper burial. As the battle raged, so many bodies were moved into the barn that they were "stacked up like cordwood," newer bodies piled on top of the previous ones in a grisly pyramid of the dead. Unfortunately, not every body piled there was dead. One of those men, so grievously wounded he was thought to be dead, was thrown onto the pile and soon became trapped beneath dozens of his comrades. At some point, he awakened to find himself alive but being almost suffocated beneath the weight of the grizzly remains. When the battle was over and northern troops began removing the bodies one by one three days later, one of them tugged on the leg of a body to disentangle it from the others. He was astonished when he finally tugged it free and the man's eyes popped open, his arms and legs began to twitch and terrible screams came from his lips. He had been alive, trapped beneath all those rotting bodies for four days, slowly going mad. A doctor was summoned, but nothing could be done. The man screamed and cried out incoherently for almost a week. He never regained his senses and died crying. 

In the late 1800s, the widow Thompson died and the barn burned down. New owners built their home over the barn site. Shortly after moving in, the family began reporting odd sounds coming from their basement which were not the usual creaks and groans of a new house settling. One night, a loud explosion, "like a furnace exploding," came from the basement. Then the whole house began shaking as if it was in an earthquake. "The appliances, dishes, glasses, and cutlery were shaking violently and falling off the shelves. Furniture in the hallway was moving from one side to the other." Loud noises continued to come from the basement so the family members went to open the door leading down. Before opening it though, the door began to bow outward as if there was a great force on the other side. It sounded as if someone with a sledgehammer was pounding it. This was enough for the family to flee in terror. 

The family refused to ever return to the house that had frightened them so badly. They did seek spiritual help from an old priest though and he went to bless the house. After his visit, he told the family that he had some experience with sending spirits on their way and he felt the need to perform a ceremony that would do this. He said he felt the house was haunted, not by an evil entity, but rather one they should pity. The spirit trapped in the house was a terrified young Confederate soldier who was desperately trying to free himself from the horrible place he was in before he died. A short time later, the priest performed the ceremony and marked the cellar door with a white cross with a circle around it. The family still refused to return to the house though and later sold it. The new family reported they never heard any suspicious sounds. The house is now owned by the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg and it remains quiet.

Another particularly sad story is associated with the old Jacob Hummelbaugh house. Located on Taney Town Road, it was just behind the Federal battle line. It was set up as the 2nd Corp field hospital. A Confederate general by the name of Barksdale was mortally wounded while leading his men in a charge against the northern troops. After repulsing the charge, Yankee troops collected the wounded and he was taken, still alive, to the Hummelbaugh house for medical treatment. According to written documentation, Doctors determined nothing could be done to save him so he was moved to the front yard and left to die. He repeatedly called for water so a young orderly fed water to him with a spoon until he passed. 

Several weeks later, General Barksdale's wife came to retrieve her husband's body to return him home in Mississippi for burial. Along with the wife and her male helpers on the trip was the general's favorite hunting dog. Once the shallow grave of General Barksdale had been identified, the dog smelled around for a few seconds then laid down and began a mournful howl. Even after his master's body had been dug up and removed, the dog continued to lay next to the grave and refused to leave it. Finally, with the body readied for travel, the wife felt she had no choice but to leave the dog behind. Over the next days, the faithful dog became a familiar fixture. He would occasionally let out a pitiful, heartbreaking howl that could be heard all around the area, but in spite of offers of food and water, he refused to eat or drink or leave the gravesite. He eventually died of hunger and thirst, stretched out over his master's now empty burial place. Over the years since, every July 2nd, the anniversary of Barksdale's death, it is reported that an unearthly howl echos during the night as the faithful dog still grieves from a place beyond this world.

Haunted Fort Leaton

Ben Leaton, a former scalp hunter, purchased a shack and a plot of land on the banks of the Rio Grande in 1848 and built a 40-room adobe building surrounded by a thick adobe wall. From this fort, he conducted a trading post business and made a truce with the Apache and Comanche Indians whom he formerly killed and scalped for the bounties paid by the Mexican government. He did this by paying with food, goods, and guns for the cattle brought back to him which had been stolen from Mexicans on the other side of the river. 

Leaton died in 1851, leaving his widow alone in the fort on the rugged, inhospitable land. She soon married a man named Edward Hall. He moved into the fort and took over Ben's business. He wasn't as good at the business as Leaton had been and the couple fell on financial hard times. Edward used the fort and land as collateral to secure a loan from Leaton's former scalp-hunting partner, John Burgess. When Hall defaulted on the loan, Burgess demanded he and his family vacate the fort and hand over everything to him. Hall refused to move. Bad decision as he was found murdered not long after.

The now twice-widowed woman took her son and left. Burgess moved in and for the next 10 years, he scratched out a living raising and selling cattle and running the trading post. Then one day, Burgess himself was found with several fatal bullet holes in him. It was reported that Leaton's now grown son was seen in the area shortly before the body was found, but then nothing more was seen of him. It was rumored he had killed Burgess in retaliation for his step-father's death. There was no proof and, like Hall's murder, the murder of Burgess was never officially solved.

When Fort Leaton was abandoned in the 1920s, a number of homeless families moved into the fort's adobe structure. None stayed very long. A man and his wife who had fallen on hard times temporarily moved into one of the rooms. They soon realized although they were the only people there, they were not alone. When it got dark, the couple would retire for the night as they were so poor they didn't even have candles to light the room. Night after night they were startled awake by the sound of dishes crashing to the floor and breaking. Grabbing a burning stick from the fireplace, they searched the whole place but found no broken dishes and no explanation for the sounds. They soon fled, thinking sleeping outside was preferable to staying inside the fort.

For years, there were rumors that old Ben Leaton had buried gold coins inside the fort.  Treasure hunters searched in vain, digging a huge hole just outside the home's northern wall. When the Texas Parks and Wildlife purchased the property in 1968, they hired a team of workers to remove the trash from the hole and fill it in. The job was barely halfway finished when the whole crew abruptly quit and left, not returning even for their paychecks. They claimed that while they worked, something kept grabbing their legs and trying to pull them down into the bottom of the pit. 

Other workers repeatedly swore they had seen through a window an old woman sitting in a rocking chair in the room that had been the kitchen. Witnesses have reported seeing a shadowy man who matches the description of Edward Hall standing in the chapel room where he was murdered years ago. 

Staff and visitors alike have reported hearing rattling noises coming from the area of the granary. It sounds just like there is a group of men removing the harnesses from their horses, but when you look, no one is actually there. Or are they?

A less well-known tale is of a poor cowboy who, around the turn of the century, was caught in a sudden thunderstorm. Heading toward Fort Leaton for protection, a lightning bolt spooked his horse. The cowboy was thrown from the saddle, but his foot caught in the stirrup and as the horse madly ran across the rugged land, the doomed man was slammed into a boulder and beheaded. Because it is a tale unknown by most, it's all the more disturbing that numerous people have reported seeing a headless horseman riding a white horse around the compound of the fort.

Fort Leaton is an interesting place to tour in the day, but the gates close at 4:30PM and you might want to think twice about being in the area after dark.