What a tragedy! For the second straight year, the mysterious visitor who would place a rose and a bottle of cognac on Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite every year, failed to appear. I think he/she must have joined Poe in eternal oblivion… Oh, the passing of time and all of its crimes…
Oh, by the way, I’ve visited Poe’s grave a couple times and created a travelogue on it back in 2001. Enjoy!
I have a “Bucket List” of hotels that I want to stay in before I die. Naturally, these are allegedly haunted hotels or sites of extreme infamy. I thought I’d share some of my favorites with you, starting with:
The Stanley Hotel
Estes Park, Colorado
Stephen King was staying in suite 217 when he had his inspiration for The Shining, and parts of the miniseries were filmed here. You may have seen the Ghost Hunters episode in which lots of allegedly crizaaaazy shit went down too (but I trust that show as far as I can throw Jason). But even if the ghost stories are complete bollocks, the hotel is an awesome architectural relic and the ghost tour sounds like fun: you even get to check out the underground tunnel! And that’s good enough for me.
The Stanley Hotel, Circa 1917
The Stanley Hotel
Stanley Hotel Ghost Tours
I received an e-mail of support for my Keddie Murder Cabin travelogue and thought I’d repost the link for those of you who never heard about the controversy. Back in 2001, I read about a group of extremely grisly unsolved murders at the Keddie Resort in the Feather River Canyon of Northern California that occurred in the early ’80s. A friend of mine had grown up in the area and had gone to school with one of the murder victims. We decided to take a drive up to Keddie to find the cabin for ourselves and photograph it. We did so, and my ensuing travelogue (with its typical black humor) didn’t go over so well with the natives. I received a lot of hate mail, which I lovingly share on the site.
In 2006, Cabin 28, where the attack occurred, was demolished, thus taking an irreplaceable piece of morbid history with it. But the travelogue lives on… and the story was recently covered by David Kulczyk in his book Death In California (complete with some of my actually pretty poor photographs).
Cabin 28
Here again is the Keddie Travelogue in all its gorey:
Keddie Resort
And here’s the Hate Mail page:
Fan Mail!
Enjoy!
Since I mentioned the museum with the gangrenous elbow post the other day, I thought I’d repost a link to my travelogue to the marvelous National Museum of Health and Medicine which I visited way back in 2001. I’m due for a return visit!
Haun’s Mill is a site of infamy in Missouri where a massacre of Mormons occurred in 1838. I have featured it on its own page on The Morbid Sightseer: Haun’s Mill. I received the following e-mail in June from a relative of a survivor of the massacre and I finally got around to posting it on the page.
My name is Tony Jameson. I am a distant relative of Charles Jameson. Charles and his wife Mary Hedrick Jameson had joined the Latter-day Saint church and were baptized on April 6, 1834. They lived in Perry, Richland County, Ohio. When members of the church were compelled to move from Ohio to Missouri, Charles and Mary moved to Missouri with them. From my research it is not clear to me if Charles and Mary were among the 50 families who lived at Hauns’ Mill, or if they were just passing through the area on the way to Far West, Missouri. At any rate on October 30, 1838 they (and I suppose their many children) were there. Charles was shot four times. Once in the head (which was severe enough to expose his brain), once in the shoulder, and twice in the abdomen. Like all the people in the massacre he tried to escape into the woods. Reduced to crawling he was able to make it to the wood line when two of the militia soldiers came upon him. One of the the soldiers was going to shoot him and finish the deed. The other said something to the effect, “Don’t waste your ammunition upon him. Let him suffer longer; he’s already going to die”. With that they left him to bleed to death. However, Charles somehow survived.
Charles’ life was preserved despite his persecutions. Later the Mormons were forced to flee Illinois or face a similar fate as many of the Mormons faced at Hauns Mill. During the 1,500 mile trek to the safety of the Rock mountains Charle’s wife Mary died of Cholera. Charles later married Nancy Stanley. Nancy and Charles are my progenitors. I am here writing this E-mail to you today, because of a morbid twist of fate at Hauns’ Mill. Had the Missouri militia members come upon Charles Jameson and his brain was not exposed and his abdominal contents not partially eviscerated, they probably would have shot and killed him like they did the other men and small boys. But instead they wanted him to suffer longer. Consequently, they left him to die thus saving themselves a piece of lead they might use on some other defenseless man or child.
You can read all of the comments I’ve received on Haun’s Mill at the Haun’s Mill page of The Morbid Sightseer.
Here’s an interesting place for UrbEx in Pennsylvania: Concrete City. It may not be there for much longer, so enjoy it while you can!
Thanks to Brian for the link.
Chase writes about the Buffalo Asylum:
“I’ve recently re-located to Buffalo NY. My partner works at one of the many universities here, directly next door to the Buffalo Richardson Complex, formerly known as Buffalo’s Asylum for the Insane. I know it’s featured on your Morbid Sightseeing page, but I feel your links don’t do it justice. The architecture is gorgeous, and the complex is huge. When I say ‘huge’ I don’t mean most of a city block or anything like that. It’s like 6 blocks long. Here’s a link to some photos of the building and a link to the Google Map that shows the size of this thing. It’s almost as big as the university itself.
“Great news! I’ve recently heard that discussions are being held towards the possibility of turning this wonderful old pile into a conference center and hotel. I can’t think of a better place to spend a special Valentines Night or my next anniversary (whether it’s a hotel then or not!)
“There’s also a massive old cemetery nearby, it’s part of Delaware park. I find that amusing, since that’s generally how I view cemeteries, as big parks where there happen to be lots of nifty monuments to the dead.
“Drop by Buffalo if you get the chance, it’s not just hockey and those disgusting fried waste parts of chicken dipped in vinegary sauce, we’ve got dead things and decaying buildings, too!”
Should you be planning a visit to the Czech Republic anytime soon, you surely cannot miss stopping by the Ossuary at Sedlec! It’s a chapel decorated with human bones! Now, there’s a proper church!
Thanks to Kevin for reminding me of this one.
Nikki writes to tell us about visiting the site of the Great Boston Molasses Flood:
“After reading about this flood on my MFDJ email a long time back I’ve been nearly obsessed with this event. Read everything I could on it. Telling everyone I meet about it.
“So finally the day came that my Significant Other and I were taking a trip to that area. I demanded we find the site of the great flood!! I swear we looked friggin’ everywhere for this. Found a really awesome cemetery, but nothing on the flood. We scavenged the entire area on the map that was the location to no avail. Finally as we were giving up and leaving I passed by a teeny tiny little sign on a wall, about 2 feet high. The sign was at knee level where anyone could miss it. Needless to say I was not pleased, but at least glad there was something there. Personally I’d love to see a giant bronze statue depicting the wave and people drowning in it, but alas. At least some kind of monument would have been nice.”
More Bay State morbid sightseeing suggestions can be found at The Morbid Sightseer‘s Massachusetts page.
Did you hear the one about the retired Canadian undertaker who built a house out of embalming fluid bottles? Now you have!
The Embalming Fluid Bottle House
Thanks to The Dickeys for the suggestion.
More Canadian sightseeing suggestions at the Morbid Sightseer’s Canada page.
