Lore - Lore 254: Remnants

Episode Date: May 20, 2024

While every place has a dark history that seeps into the present, this particular spot is home to an eclectic and strange mix of hauntings and spooks. Written and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with research by Cassandra de Alba and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Sponsors: Thorne: Give your body what it really needs with Thorne. Go to Thorne.fit/lorepodcast for 10% off your first order. BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to [e-mail] with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ————————— To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here. ————————— ©2024 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

The past is hidden in plain sight. Sometimes the past is hidden in plain sight. Every day we bump into and use elements of an era that has long since vanished, little remnants of a different culture from long ago, stuck inside our modern world. 3,000 years ago, the superpower of the Mediterranean were the Phoenicians. They were a naval empire with a focus on international trade and commerce. But beyond goods and services, they also spread something far more lasting, language.

A great example is the Phoenician word for bull, which they called eleph. It was drawn as the simple shape of a rounded nose with two horns off the back of it. It was easy to carve into clay with just two strokes, a sort of long, stretched out letter C, with a vertical line slicing down across the open end. Around 800 BC, those Phoenicians rubbed off on their neighbors, the ancient Greeks. The Greeks, you see, loved the characters that the Phoenicians used for their writing system, so they borrowed and adapted it. That symbol for the eleph got turned horns downward, and over time the curved end was sharpened. Oh, and the Greeks changed its name,

too, to alpha. And 2,000 years later, it's still around as the letter A. Like I said, sometimes the past is hidden in plain sight. It might be a word or a tool or even a food, but more often than not, it's a story, a tale that's been told for so long that people forget that it has real historical roots. It makes sense, doesn't it? Everyone loves an entertaining story, and the ones that thrill and chill us are easy to pass on from generation to generation. But buried within that concept is a darker truth.

Most frightening legends exist because someone in the past did something truly horrifying. I'm Aaron Manke and this is Lore. If I'm honest, we could tell this sort of story just about anywhere. So why not center it on our nation's capital? No, not Washington, D.C., our first capital, according to many. I'm talking about York, Pennsylvania. Between September of 1777 and June of 1778, the town of York was home to the leaders who were getting America's feet on the ground. And because the Articles of Confederation were adopted there, which was really the document that gave the Continental Congress its official power,

well, a lot of people think that this was our true beginning. York wasn't a metropolis back then. Even today, it's home to only about 45,000 people. But it was certainly distinct and that's partly due to the fact that it was home to a lot of immigrants from Germany who didn't speak English. John Adams was there in 1777 and he wrote back to his wife Abigail that multitudes are born, grow up and die here without ever learning English. But there were other nationalities there as well, including Irish.

Specifically, an Irishman named James Smith. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a member of the Continental Congress, and the only lawyer in York. And boy did he have a reputation for enjoying a good party. So well known for it, in fact fact that after his death in 1806, his afterlife started to take on flavors of wine soaked celebration. His body might be in the graveyard

of York's first Presbyterian church, but his spirit has been spotted wandering the streets of York. He is said to fill the air with sounds of laughter, all with a bottle of wine in hand. Another key figure in the early life of York was Philip Livingston. He too was a member of the Continental Congress, although he only visited from his home in New York.

At 62, he was one of the oldest members of that leadership group, and while that's not ancient by modern standards, Livingston was going downhill fast. In fact, when he left his home in June of 1778 to go to York for a meeting of Congress, he bid farewell to his entire family, assuming that he would never see them again. And he didn't. Livingston passed away in York on June 12th of that year.

The entire Continental Congress attended his funeral too. I don't know if it was the first state funeral of its kind, but it was certainly a spectacle. All of those leaders dressed in black with armbands to mark their grief. And the following month was set aside as a period of mourning. But Livingston wasn't finished. As I said before, 30 years later, James Smith's ghost would mirror his earthly condition by partying it up. In the same way, Livingston's afterlife seems to have been an extension of his poor health.

His ghost has been spotted often in York, and the descriptions are always the same. Bloated, sick, and unwell. Like a man who was very unhappy to be there. But those two early ghosts aside, perhaps the most prominent member of York life was a man who came a generation later. William C. Goodridge was a black man who arrived in York at the age of five, sometime around 1811. He, like so many others, had been sold and separated from his family and wound up in a tannery making leather. Now, William somehow arrived in York as an indentured servant, meaning that he only had

to work for a certain length of time before he would be granted his freedom. And because the owner of the tannery passed away before that time was up, William found himself in charge of his own life by the young age of just 16. And he made the most of it. Over the years that followed, William trained as a barber, opened his own shop, and then just kept expanding. He created his own line of cosmetics, which were distributed all across the eastern seaboard. And with the help of his brilliant wife, Evelina, he pushed into real estate, extending his

empire even further. But as if that weren't enough, William Goodridge risked all of that wealth and power by getting deeply involved in the Underground Railroad, helping enslave people from the South escape to freedom in the North. In fact, the Goodridge House contains a number of secret rooms, all used for those clandestine efforts. Today, that house is said to be haunted by the ghosts of that painful and dangerous past.

Visitors have heard the sounds of chains being dragged across floorboards and the desperate moans of invisible people. There's even a window on the second floor that simply refuses to stay closed, suggesting to some that there's a spirit in the house who wants to keep an open exit, just in case. Many years ago, a pair of men were working on some repairs in the basement of the house,

when they heard the distinct sounds of someone walking across the floor above them, which was odd since they were supposed to be the only people in there. So they went upstairs to ask the person to leave, only to discover that there was no one there. Frustrated and a little disturbed, they headed back down to their work in the cellar. But after a few moments of relative silence, they heard something that left them terrified. The walking sounds in the empty house above them had returned. Jacob Brillinger bought the farm. Literally, I mean.

Sometime in the early 1800s, he bought a farm in York and then slowly transformed it, eventually building a house there along with a number of outbuildings that you might need if you were going to be a farmer. As far as I can tell, that house was built in 1835, standing three stories tall and designed to reflect the popular Jeffersonian style of architecture, but it was more than a home and refuge for Jacob and his family. If the rumors are true, they also used it as another stop on the Underground Railroad, with trapdoors, hidden hallways, and a bedroom on the third floor.

In 1863, however, the Civil War spilled into York and for a brief period in June of that year the Confederates controlled the area. Seeing as how Jacob's house was so large and it was a farm that produced things like grain and livestock, it's no surprise that the Southern forces parked themselves inside it and bled the place dry of its resources. 25 years later, the Brillingers sold their estate to John Henry Small and his family, who would remain there for the next seven decades. Along the way, they moved the house to a different part of the lot, a process I'm told that

involved a bunch of greased logs and a lot of strong animals. And with a new location came some new additions, namely electricity and indoor plumbing, as well as a name for the place. They called it Elmwood, and over the years, the house passed from one member of the small family to another. In the mid-1950s, it was sold to a friend of the family named Edward Strickler, only to have an on-ramp for Interstate 83 built pretty much in the front yard a couple of

years later. Not the best thing for property value or peace of mind, I suppose, but it would stay in his family until 1986, when his nephew, Richard Krause, sold it to a hospital as a conference center. And that's a long and textured history, for sure, but it wasn't all smooth sailing. It seems that for most of that time, the house was home to more than just the living. As far back as the small ownership, there were constant reports of unusual sightings and experiences inside the house.

Objects that moved on their own, disembodied sounds, cold spots, and strange footsteps. Honestly, just read through a list of stereotypical descriptions of hauntings and Elmwood has it all. But one of the more prominent and unusual sightings has been a pair of Civil War-era ghosts. According to Anne Small-Nice, who grew up in the house in the 1920s, it wasn't uncommon to see a ghostly woman in one of the upstairs halls, dressed in a large Victorian-era hoop skirt.

Every time the figure appeared, the lights in the hall would apparently flicker and sometimes go out. At least once, according to family accounts, the woman appeared while the cat was in the hallway, causing their feline friend to arch its back, shriek loudly, and then run around in circles out of fear. For the curious animal lovers out there, this cat was apparently named Sassy, and was an 18-pound snub-nosed kitty described as having a perky disposition and a white star on his forehead. And while ghosts are cool, I just want them to leave this cat alone.

Anyway, also from the Civil War is another figure that's been reportedly spotted in the house over the years. One of the Krauss children had an encounter in the 1980s with a man he described as an officer. He was standing in front of one of the windows, peering out into the yard outside, with one hand placed dramatically on the hilt of his cavalry sword. When the pale figure turned its head to the child, revealing a grizzled white beard and piercing eyes, the boy ran away screaming from fear.

And it was during that same period that one of the most chilling experiences took place. Richard Krauss, the owner of the house, was upstairs watching television in the family room when he thought he heard a noise out in the hall. Even the cat noticed, its ears perking up as it turned to look toward the door. It was the telltale unmistakable creaking of someone slowly climbing the stairs. Richard, like a lot of fathers, just assumed that one of his kids was trying to sneak up on him. Perhaps in an effort to turn that trick around,

he silently rose from his chair and snuck toward the hallway door, hoping to scare his son before he could jump out of the shadows himself. Except when he got there, his heart skipped a beat. The hallway and the stairs beyond were completely empty. The haunted history of York isn't limited to one house and a graveyard or two.

In fact, one of the most memorable stories played out right in the middle of town, in the public park. But to understand it, we need to start a few decades earlier. During the time of the Revolutionary War, there was a parcel of land owned by the Penn family, yes, of the Pennsylvania Penns. Known as Penn Common, it was used as a training ground for soldiers, as well as public gatherings. In 1816, though, the Penns officially donated it to the town of York, along with a couple of other lots that were earmarked for use as potter's fields, burial grounds for the

poor and the marginalized. But then a few decades later, the Civil War erupted and that land found military use again, this time as a field hospital. In 1890, York finally found a new purpose for Penn Common, designating it the official City Park. And they decided to repurpose one of the Potter's Fields as the location of a new school. But that meant moving the bodies interred there, which was no small task. The project was riddled with bad actors and money-making schemes, leaving people with

the impression that no one buried there could be happy about how things played out. Which brings us to the fall of 1903, when the headlines of the local paper, The York Daily, were awash in sensational headlines. Under the banner, Park Ghost scared them. Readers were treated to a fascinating story of a supernatural encounter in Penn Park. It described the sighting of, and I quote, a person of stately figure and cloaked in a long black gown which covered head and hands, making them unrecognizable. Basically, people who entered the park at night were spotting a woman in black, and

while the locations of these sightings seemed to be scattered all across the park, each of them took place after 10 p.m. According to the local paper, this is how most of the encounters would play out. Someone would find themselves crossing through Penn Park, alone and in the dark. Maybe they were taking a shortcut home or just out for a midnight stroll, but along the way they would spot a figure nearby, dressed all in black, and that figure would approach them. With a voice that was described by witnesses as human, this mysterious figure would raise a hand to catch their attention, and then when they were closer, would ask a question that would have seemed terrifying to anyone in a dark,

isolated corner of the park. Do you know who I am? Inevitably the witness would respond that, no, they did not know who the figure was, at which point the woman in black would tell them to reach out and lift her veil so they could see her face clearly. And friends, I have no problem admitting that this is the point that I would run for my tell them to reach out and lift her veil so they could see her face clearly. And friends, I have no problem admitting that this is the point that I would run for my life, and I assume that most of you would as well.

Poorly lit wooded areas are simply not the best place for a nighttime round of guess who, which is why just about everyone who encountered the veiled woman did the same, high-tailing it for home without a moment's hesitation. Of course, the paper took time to speculate on who she might have been, at least generally. In their 1903 article, they suggested that she was the returned spirit of one whose bones had been desecrated. Not a happy thought, for sure. Although they offered a more reasonable theory as well.

The general belief of many persons, they wrote, is that it is someone who is trying to scare persons who stay on the park late at night. Of course, believers in the paranormal would probably respond to both ideas with a shrug and say, why can't it be both? In one incident, a youth named Charles Jacobs was making his way through the park one night only to encounter the veiled woman and her unnerving questions. Out of fear, he bolted for the nearest street when he bumped into another young man heading into the park, and he warned him about the ghost.

That second youth laughed at Charles, and then continued on into the dark public space. Moments later, he too spotted the veiled woman and ran away screaming. The most startling tale, however, came from a few weeks later. A young man named William Berger was approached inside the park by a spectral woman in black. And just like all the times before, she raised her hand and then asked if he knew who she was. But when she asked him to lift her veil, William did the unthinkable. He took her up on the offer.

Reaching out with hands that most certainly would have been trembling, he caught the black lace that covered her head and slowly lifted it up and out of the way. Beneath it, he claimed, was a young and pretty face. A moment later, though, the woman reached up, brushed William's hand aside, and let the veil drop back down, concealing her again from view. William took a moment, no more than a heartbeat really, to recover from what he had seen. But before he could speak to her or lift the veil, the woman was gone. She had faded from view right before his eyes.

History sticks around. It might not always be found in something as obvious as a letter of the alphabet or even an old building. But history is all around us, and it's not always pleasant. In a lot of ways, York, Pennsylvania is just like any other community in America, or even the world. People have lived and loved and lost there. They have built lives on hope and experienced the pain of tragedy. None of that is unique to the human experience. But every place has its own flavor,

its own spin on the norm. And in York, we see that in the stories. Haunted homes that once served as hiding places for frightened, anxious people looking for a way out. Visions of disturbed souls looking for peace, or at least someone to lift their veil. York is haunted by the past and by so much more. One last story illustrates that idea all too well.

Back in the days of the Revolutionary War, a number of people came and went through York, and one of them was a general known by many as Mad Anthony Wayne. Now, you might be wondering why they called him Mad, and I am so glad you asked. You see, Wayne was deeply loyal to the American cause, and he had zero patience with any soldier who did not take their responsibilities seriously, to the point that physical violence was not out of the question.

Well in March of 1781, Mad Anthony Wayne and his forces were camped in York, and he caught word of a mutiny that was being planned. To stop it, he had all the soldiers involved rounded up, court-martialed, and then sentenced to death. And to carry out their execution, he enlisted at least 20 of their closest friends to form the firing squad. It's said that the shots were fired while the men's wives watched on in horror. When the smoke from the gunfire finally cleared, they say that the hands and heads of the executed

men had been completely blown off, all before their bodies crumpled to the ground. One witness, a major named Ebenezer Denny, later recorded his obvious and painful observation. The sight must have made an impression on the man. It was designed with that view. Most of us love a good monster story, but clearly not all monsters need to be creatures of our imagination, covered in claws and fur and human blood. As the story of Mad Anthony makes crystal clear, there are plenty of monsters right here among us. Some people don't need to leave

ghosts behind to be frightening. Sometimes their legacy is haunting enough as it is. It seems that York, Pennsylvania is home to more than history. From its earliest days right up to modern times, the people who lived there have shared space with those who died there. I hope the stories we explored today left you with an appreciation for that past and gave you a few chills in the process. But we're not done quite yet. I have one more amazing York milestone to share with you. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Get it off your chest with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash lore today to get 10 percent off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L P dot com slash lore. And finally, this episode was made possible by Squarespace. I am a tool guy. I love finding the perfect tool that helps me do a task better or faster or even

both. And since I'm always busy working on podcast projects, that means I don't have a lot of time for building websites. Thankfully, Squarespace has been here to help. I've been using Squarespace for nearly a decade now, from lore to Grim and Mild, and I've even just switched over my personal site, Aaron Manke dot com. And look, I'm not a web designer or a programmer, and yet I get to have an amazing professional website for the things that I make.

And I love that. And they just made it even easier with their new Blueprint AI tool, which lets you choose from professionally curated layout and styling options to build a unique site from the ground up tailored to your brand or business and optimized for every device. For those who sell products on their Squarespace site, you can now offer flexible payments to your customers. Except credit cards, PayPal and Apple Pay, and ineligible countries offer customers the option to buy now and pay later

with Afterpay and Clearpay. And I still love their new asset library feature that lets me save all the necessary images for my site. Things like the cover art for my shows or the photos of my team, and then have them available across the Squarespace platform. So what are you waiting for?

Build your new website today. Just visit squarespace.com slash for? Build your new website today. Just visit squarespace.com slash lore to start your free trial website. And when you're ready to launch it, use the offer code LORE at checkout to save 10%. Squarespace. Build something beautiful. Everyone loves a good ghost hunt, and contrary to popular belief, those sorts of experiences

aren't a new addition to folklore. In fact, there are tons of great tales on the historical record of people within a community gathering together to track down a special spook. And amazingly, the city of York has their own entry. We first see glimpses of it in documents dating back to January of 1880. That was when the newspapers in town reported a number of strange happenings, all centered in one small area, a block of Clark Alley between Beaver Street and George Street, and they called it the Clark Alley Imp.

Almost weekly, and usually on Sunday nights for some reason, a number of men would wrap up their evenings in the pub by walking home in small groups. But around this time, some of them started spotting unusual things in that stretch of Clark Alley. Some reports claim that it was a large animated bottle of wine known as a demijohn. Think of these as a sort of wicker-wrapped bottle, usually designed to hold massive amounts of wine. Except the haunted demijohns that these men were spotting had legs, and despite their best efforts, no one was able to catch them.

Other reports at the time claimed that the haunted object was in fact a beer barrel, complete with a tap. They say that it would roll down the street toward groups of people, almost like a possessed bowling ball looking for pins to knock over. Now I do need to stop and point out the obvious here. These sightings took place late at night by men who had, by their own self-admission, spent the evening in a bar getting as drunk as possible.

So, the fact that these inebriated witnesses reported magical anthropomorphic beer kegs and wine bottles, well, I have trouble imagining that they would dream up anything else. Still, the stories about these sightings are anything but boring. One account describes how a group of men spotted the Clark Alley imp, who had taken the form of a newsboy, complete with a stack of newspapers under his arm. But when they tried to catch him, this demonic newsie vanished in a massive puff of smoke. When the dust cleared, all that remained on the street to prove that it had been there at all was a handful of newspapers. Upon closer inspection, though, witnesses say that those scraps weren't

actually covered in English, but a writing that no one had ever seen before. Oh, and it all smelled strongly of sulfur. In a clipping from the York Daily, another group reported seeing the imp and said they knew it was him because it appeared, and I quote, in the form of a man and put on the airs of a horse thief. Although, to be fair, that actually describes half the guys I went to high school with as well. Now, after a good number of sightings and a whole lot of publicity in the local papers, concerned citizens started organizing themselves into groups with a specific aim of finding

and catching the Clark Alley Imp. Two men who were out hunting one night were so certain they had spotted the Imp that they found a police officer and convinced him to stand guard at the end of the street while they tried to flush him out. After a couple of hours, though, the policeman gave up and moved on. Which it turns out was a smart move. You see, Clark Alley wasn't the only spot in town with a supernatural pest. Another area had what they called the 9th Ward Phantasm, and there were actual hunts for it

as well. The Daily York reported that one night a group of men looking for this creature spotted it in the middle of the street right before their eyes. According to them, it was dark and shapeless, more like a shadow than anything else, but they knew what it was. One of the party, the article said, drew a revolver, took deliberate aim at the something, and fired. And I love how they describe the action next. The deadly leaden messenger, that would be the bullet, sped its way, and when the smoke from the powder had cleared away, the apparition was gone.

The only object remaining in sight was a post, and upon examination, the bullet was found embedded within. Whether they consider that a success or a failure, the article tells us that the men gave up after that, but they promised to remain vigilant. Woe to the spook that will come within range of their trusted weapons, the article declared. So let the hobgoblin fraternity look out. And to that I say, woe to them indeed. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Cassandra

de Alba and music by Chad Lawson. Don't like the ads? We've got a solution. There's a paid version of Lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Plus subscribers get weekly mini-episodes called Lore Bites. It's a bargain for all of that ad free storytelling and a great way to support this show and the team behind it. Lore is also much more than just a podcast.

There's the World of Lore three book series and bookstores, plus two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more over at lorepodcast.com. And you can also follow this show on threads, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.