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Brinkley Female College Memphis, Tennessee
This woman’s college was haunted by the ghastly phantom of a little girl with sunken eyes and unkempt hair. Wearing a moldy, wet, pink dress, the apparition first appeared on February 21, 1871, to student Clara Robinson, who was practicing piano in the music room. The ghost followed her when Clara went screaming into the halls. One week later the ghost appeared to the same women, as well as teacher Jackie Boone and another student. The child ghost told them of a large glass jar buried under a stump at the front of the building, but the apparition warned them not to open the jar for sixty days and to keep it at the home of Clara’s father, a lawyer. They dug up the jar and waited. Meanwhile, news spread of the ghost. People were afraid to go out at night, and sightings of the Girl in Pink were coming in from as far away as Missouri. The jar was to be opened in public at the Greenlaw Opera House. However, a few days before the big event, a thief accosted Mr. Robinson in his backyard and threatened to kill him unless he told him where the jar was hidden. The jar was hid in the privy in the backyard, and the thief made off with it. The only verification of the strange events is in county records. The college was formerly a mansion built by Colonel Davis, who sold the property after the death of his young daughter, Lizzie. The mansion was demolished in 1972. Brinkley’s pink ghost has been reported throughout the city.

Resch House Columbus, Ohio
This house was the site of unexplainable poltergeist activity for several months in 1984. It all started in March, when the TV and microwave kept running even when unplugged. Then the shower started turning on by itself, chairs overturned, and eggs flew across the kitchen and spattered against the walls. John and Joan Resch and their six children were terrified. Efforts by Mormon elders to dispel the presence with prayer were not successful. After and electrician could find nothing wrong with house wiring, the family called the police. Before long, forty reporters had descended on the house and witnessed many of the unbelievable events. And investigation by the highly respected Psychical Research Foundation concluded that Tina, the Resh’s fourteen year old daughter, was the source of the phenomena. They took her back to North Carolina, where she produced a wide variety of psychokinetic manifestations. The case became one of the best-documented instances of spontaneous psychogenesis ever investigated.

Snedecker House Southington, Connecticut
Allen and Carmen Snedecker moved into their new home in 1986. They had no idea their new house was haunted until their fourteen year old son Phillip began seeing monk like apparitions in the house. The entire family started hearing strange scratching sounds and frightful whispering coming from the walls. Several ghosts were encountered in the basement, including and old man in a blue suit with his eyes rolled back into his head, a young man with long black hair, and a little boy wearing Superman pajamas. Then, an evil presence started molesting Tammy, their eighteen year old daughter. Several nights in a row, Tammy awoke screaming, saying something had sexually assaulted her. After a grueling exorcism that lasted many hours, a Vatican-trained demonologist priest declared the house clean of spirits. Ed and Loraine Warren investigated the case and discovered that the seventy five year old house was once a funeral home, and the embalming room was located in the basement. The suspected that necrophilia had taken place there.

Resurrection Mary
For a number of years motorists driving along Archer Avenue in Chicago’s South Side have reported giving rides to a beautiful hitchhiker, a blond wearing a white gown that seems to date from the 1920’s or 1930’s. The drivers are said to be mostly single males, and the girl often jumps into their cars uninvited, saying that she needs a ride home. Home turns out to be the Resurrection Cemetery, at 7200 South Archer Avenue, and when the car draws level with it, the hitchhiker gets out (sometimes opening the car door, sometimes passing right through it), walks up to the closed wrought-iron gates, and passes through them, disappearing into thin air once inside the cemetery.

Resurrection Mary, as the specter has been named, is said to be the ghost of a young Polish girl who was killed in an auto accident while being driven home from a dance at the O. Henry Ballroom (now named the Willowbrook Ballroom) on Archer Avenue in 1931 and buried in her party dress and dancing shoes in Resurrection Cemetery.

One night in December 1977 a motorist noticed a young woman dressed in white standing inside the cemetery gates. She was looking out and holding onto the iron bars of the gates. Thinking that the girl had been inadvertently locked inside the cemetery, the motorist called the police, but by the time the patrol car appeared the girl had vanished. The officer beamed his searchlight into the cemetery but saw nothing. He and the motorist did notice, though, that two of the iron bars in the gate were bent apart and that at the point where they were bent where the marks, seemingly etched into the iron, of two small hands.

Others had even more harrowing experiences. Rather than having the girl vanish from their car, they claimed to have actually run her down in the street. They claimed to see a woman in a white dress bolt in front of their car near the cemetery and would describe the sickening thud as she was struck by the front of the car. When they would stop to go to her aid, she would disappear. Some even said that their automobile would pass directly through the girl. At that point, she would turn and disappear through the cemetery gates.

Hull House Chicago, Illinois
This landmark building, constructed in 1856 by Charles Hull, was the alleged refuge of an infamous “devil baby.” The child, born to a devout Italian woman and her atheist husband, was said to have hooves and cloven feet, pointed ears and horns, scale-covered skin, and a long tail. In 1913, the father brought the miniature Satan to Hull House, a welfare organization run by Jane Addams, and asked them to take in the unruly devil child.

Rumors spread quickly, and in just six weeks hundreds of people traveled to Hull House to see the devil child. Addams steadfastly denied its existence, although some said she was only trying to protect the infant. Reports continue to this day of a wild creature that looks out the upstairs-left attic window and of manifestations of luminous ectoplasm that ascend the attic stairway. Several photographs have been taken of the mysterious ectoplasmic mist. Also caught on film were four monk like figures that appeared on the stairway to the second floor.

{Hull House}

Firehouse Engine Company No.107 Chicago, Illinois
The strange legacy of a dead fireman haunted this firehouse for twenty years-exactly.
While Frank Leavy was washing a window during spring cleaning at the station on April 18, 1924, he paused with his left hand resting on the window and told a fellow firefighter that he thought he was going to die that day. At that moment, the station received an alarm, and the firefighters headed for a fire at Curran Hall, an old office building in central Chicago. While fighting the blaze, a brick wall collapsed and killed eight firefighters. Leavy was one of them. The next day, firefighters noticed an unusual stain on one of the windows. It was the imprint of Frank’s hand, made as he was cleaning the window on that fateful day. Try as they might, the firemen could not erase the handprint. The stain seemed to be etched into the glass. For the next twenty years, the handprint was a grim reminder to firefighters of the danger of their profession. Then, on April 18, 1944, a careless newspaper boy tossed a paper through the window and broke it to pieces.

Hotel Leger Mokelumne Hill, California
Before you take a room at Hotel Leger, be sure to take a good look at the portrait on the north wall of the dining room, a photograph of the founder of the century-old hotel. George Leger. He was an aristocratic French immigrant who lived and died in Room 7 of the hotel. George was known for his amorous adventures with the wives of the local gold miners and for the meticulous way he ran his hotel.

Many witnesses can attest to the fact that George never really left. Startled guest have confronted his well-attired specter gliding silently throughout the halls. Some people have complained of rowdy laugher and ladies’ giggling behind the door of an otherwise empty Room 7. The hotel’s personnel accept George’s presence as a normal part of their jobs, and manager Ronald Miller remembers to pay his respects. Not long ago, while patrolling the halls, he noticed the shadow of a man following him. Miller turned around, and though he could see nobody there, the shadow remained on the wall. “Good night, George,” he said, and the shadow disappeared.

{George Leger}

The Death of Thelma Todd

Thelma Todd was a popular actress of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Born in Lawrence, MA in 1905, Todd was a school teacher and model before beginning her career in film. Appearing in over 40 movies between 1926 and 1935, she is best remembered for her comedic roles in films like Marx Brothers movies, Monkey Business and Horse Feathers. In the 1930s, she opened a restaurant, Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk Cafe, and took up residence in a luxurious apartment above the cafe. Located near the ocean on the Roosevelt Highway at Castellammare, it became a popular meeting and eating place. It was in the garage of the Sidewalk Cafe on December 15, 1935, that she was found in her parked car, dead of carbon monoxide poisoning. Was it suicide or murder?

The Grand Jury investigation into her death yielded conflicting results. Spots of blood were found both on and in the car, and on Todd’s mouth. This led to the theory that she might have been knocked out, then placed in the car by persons unknown. In support of this theory was the additional fact that her blood alcohol level was .13; enough, it was stated, to “stupefy” her. To further this theory, Todd would have had to ascend a steep flight of outdoor stairs after leaving the cafe to reach the garage, and the shoes she was wearing when her body was discovered were high-heeled sandals and were free of any dirt. Additionally, an unidentified, smudged handprint was found on the door of her car.

If it was murder, who might have had a motive, and was there any supporting evidence? Todd had been the victim of an extortion attempt, and had also just come through a rather acrimonious divorce that involved charges of spousal abuse. Investigators ultimately decided that neither of these occurrences were related to her death, and no other motives or suspects were revealed during the investigation.

The suicide theory was supported by the testimony of several witnesses at the Grand Jury investigation, who stated that Todd had been subject to depression, and often spoke of ending it all. It was also revealed that she was in trouble with the IRS, and on the verge of bankruptcy.

In the end, the Grand Jury ruled her death a suicide. But doubts remained, and the mystery lingers: What really happened to Thelma Todd on that December morning in 1935?