Lore - REMASTERED – Episode 33: A Dead End

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Today’s REMASTERED edition of a classic Lore episode takes us back to the streets of Richmond, Virginia, where folklore seems to be underneath you everywhere you go. Along with the fresh narration and production, don’t miss the brand new bonus story at the end. Researched, written, and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with music by Chad Lawson, with additional help from GennaRose Nethercott and Harry Marks. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ———————— ©2022 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved. Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.

When the trucker pulled up to the toll booth on Route 895 in Virginia, it was the middle of the night and the look on his face was one of confusion and fear. The toll booth attendant listened to the man's story and then sent him on his way. The state highway is referred to as Pocahontas Parkway, so maybe the man's story was just a play on the name's motif, but when the highway department received more than a few phone calls that night from distressed motorists, each telling essentially the same story, the authorities began to take notice. What the truck drivers saw, what all of them claimed to have seen, was a small group of

Native Americans standing in the grass between the east and westbound lanes of traffic near Mill Road. The trucker described them as standing motionless in the grass, each holding a burning torch. He assumed that they were picketing, of course. After all, the parkway is rumored to cut through land that is sacred to local Native American tribes, but the middle of the night didn't seem like the right time for a peaceful protest, so it didn't sit well with him or the others who claimed to see the very same thing. The time's dispatch caught wind of the story and soon people were flocking to the Mill

Street overpass to see if they too could catch a glimpse of the ghosts. And that's what it all comes down to, isn't it? We all want to see the ghosts, to witness history press its face against the glass of the present, to cheat reality, in a sense. Each year, thousands of people around the world claim that they too have seen a ghost. They tell their stories and pass along their goosebumps like some communicable disease. But the reality is that, for most of us, we never see a thing. History is often nothing more than a distant memory.

In some places, though, that history floats a bit closer to the surface. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. When the English arrived in what is now Virginia, way back in 1607, they found the land heavily populated by the original inhabitants of the region. The English call them the Pohetan, although that was just the name of their leader. If you don't recognize his name, that's understandable, but everyone certainly remembers his daughter, Pocahontas. Before Richmond was, well, Richmond, the land where it now stands was an important Pohetan

settlement. In 1607, a party from Jamestown traveled inland and claimed the location as their own. Possession of the land bounced back and forth between the Native Americans and the English for years, but it was finally in 1737 that the tribes lost and Richmond was born. Early on, Richmond played host to important figures in the American Revolution against England. Patrick Henry, the man who shouted, give me liberty or give me death, did so from St. John's Church right there in town.

And in the middle of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson served as the governor of Virginia out of Richmond. Less than a century later, Richmond became a key city in the Confederacy as the American Civil War tore the country apart. From its munitions factory and railroad system to the seat of the new government under Jefferson Davis, the city was powerful. And right at the center of it all is Bell Isle. It sits right there in the James River between Hollywood Cemetery to the north and Forest

Hill to the south. It's easy to overlook it on a map, but far from being an afterthought, Bell Isle is actually home to some of the most painful memories in the history of the city. Before the English arrived and Captain John Smith stood atop the rocks there, it belonged to the Pohetan. Shortly after the English took control of it in the early 1700s, it was a fishery. Even in 1814, the old Dominion Iron and Nail Company built a factory there. Positioned on the river with the strong current never tiring, it was the perfect location

to harness the power of the water. As the ironworks grew, so did its footprint. The factory expanded, a village was built around it, and even a general store popped up to serve the hundreds of people who called the island home. But they wouldn't be the only ones to live there. In 1862, Confederate forces moved onto the island and began to fortify it. Their plan was to use the isolated island as a prison camp and began to transport Union captives there by the thousands.

Over the three years that it was in operation, the prison played host to over 30,000 Union soldiers, sometimes over 10,000 at a time, and the crowded space and resentful feelings between Confederates and Union ideals led to deplorable conditions. In 1882, after living with memories of the prison camp for nearly two decades, New York Cavalry officer William H. Wood wrote to the editor of the National Tribune with his observations. Many froze to death during the winter, he wrote. Others were tortured in the most barbarous manner. I have seen men put a stride, a wooden horse, such as masons use, say five feet high, with

their feet tied to stakes in the ground, and there left for an hour or more on a cold winter morning. Their feet would freeze and burst open. He also wrote about their lack of food. A lieutenants dog, he wrote, was once enticed over the bank and taken into an old tent where it was killed and eaten raw. Your humble servant had a piece of it. For this act of hungry men, the entire camp was kept out of rations all day.

There were only a few wooden shacks to house the prisoners, so they lived out their days completely exposed to the elements, blistering heat, freezing cold, rain, and frost. All of it contributed to the suffering of the men who were held there. Estimates vary depending on the source, but it's thought that nearly half of those who were brought there, that's close to 15,000, never left alive. Today, Belle Isle is a public park, haunted by a dark past, and by those who lived and died there long ago. You can't see their ghosts, but you can certainly feel them.

It's a heavy place. Those who visit the island claimed to have felt its dark past in the air, like the stifling heat of an iron forge. But there are other places in Richmond that are said to be haunted. Unlike Belle Isle, though, these locations aren't in ruins, or nearly forgotten by the living. They're right in the middle of everyday life, and each one has a unique story to tell. They have their own past, and according to those who have been there, that past can

be seen. Technically, Wrexham Hall is in Chesterfield County, just south of Richmond. But when you speak to people about the city's deeply haunting past, it's always brought up as a perfect example of local lore. And while it doesn't have a large number of stories to tell, what it does offer is chilling enough. The house was built at the end of the 18th century by Archibald Walthall, who left the home to his two daughters, Polly and Susanna.

It was Susanna who later sold the childhood home, but because there was always risk that the property might be used for future construction, she required that the new owners at least preserve the family graveyard. Wrexham and the elements, though, have allowed the site of the burial ground to slip from memory. And according to some, that's why Susanna has returned to Wrexham Hall, perhaps in an effort to make sure some piece of the past is still remembered. It was years after her death when the home was owned by a man named Stanley Hague.

He and a handful of other men had been working in the field near the house when they looked up to see a woman in a red dress sitting on the front porch. They all saw her and even commented to each other about it. It was hard to miss that bright red against the white home. Later when Stanley headed home, he asked his wife if her mother had been on the porch that day. No, she told him, she'd been away all day in Richmond. In Hollywood Cemetery just north of Belle Isle, there are other stories afoot.

The graveyard was established in 1849 and is the final resting place of a number of important figures. Former U.S. Presidents James Monroe and John Tyler are buried there, along with Confederate President Jefferson Davis. There are also two Supreme Court Justices buried there, along with 22 Confederate Generals and over 18,000 soldiers. And those soldiers are honored with an enormous stone pyramid that reaches up beyond the trees. And even though no one is buried beneath it, there have been several reports of moans

heard coming from the stones. Others have claimed to have felt cold spots near the base. But it's really a nearby grave that's the site of the most activity there. The grave belongs to a little girl who died at the age of three from a childhood illness. And standing beside her tombstone is a large cast-iron dog. According to the local legend, the dog once stood outside of her father's grocery store. But when she passed away in 1862, it was moved to her grave to look after her. That might not be completely accurate, though.

In the early 1860s, many iron objects were melted down to be used for military purposes. And so the dog was most likely moved to the cemetery as a way of protecting it. That hasn't stopped the stories, though. Stories that include visions of a little girl playing near the grave, or the sounds of barking in the middle of the night. On nearby Kerry Street is the Old Historic Bird Theater. It was built in 1928 and named after the founder of Richmond himself, William Bird. The space inside is enormous.

It can seat over 900 on the lower level and another 400 or so in the balcony. And it's up there that some of the oddest experiences have taken place. When the theater opened its doors in December of 1928, Robert Coulter was the manager and he continued to serve in that role all the way up to 1971 when he passed away. For over four decades, he was a permanent fixture in the theater, often found sitting in his favorite seat up to one side of the balcony. And if we can believe the stories, Robert never left. The current manager has been told by a number of people that they've seen a tall man in

a suit sitting in the balcony at times when no one else was up there. Others have physically felt someone passed by them while operating the projector. The former manager has even been seen on more than one occasion by employees locking the front door at night as if he were coming out to help them. The stories that are whispered about places like Bird Theater aren't alone, though. There are dozens of locations across the city that claim unusual activity and equally eerie stories, but none can claim to have played host to a flesh and blood monster. None, that is, except for one.

In 1875, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company was looking to connect some track in Richmond to another spur 75 miles to the south. Newport News was down that way, and that meant ocean and shipping. It was a gamble to make their railroad more profitable in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and its increasing demand for things like coal, something mined in western Virginia. Part of the new railway line would cut through Richmond near Jefferson Park, and it was decided that a tunnel would be constructed for the track to pass through. Trains would enter on 18th Street and then exit 4,000 feet later on the eastern end,

near 31st Street. It was one of those ideas that sounded perfect on paper. Reality, though, had a few complications to throw at them. Richmond sits on a geological foundation of clay, as opposed to the bedrock found in other parts of the state. It's the kind of soil that changes consistency depending on the season and the weather. Many months lead to more groundwater, and that swells the clay. Dry months would cause the opposite.

As you can imagine, it's difficult to build on ground that constantly changes density. Even during construction, there were a number of caverns. Between the project's inception in 1875 and its completion six years later, at least 10 men died while working in that tunnel. Even after it was open, water had a tendency to seep in and cause problems, something that went on for decades. Around 1901, though, alternate routes were created, and the Church Hill Tunnel was used less and less.

But when the railroad wanted to increase capacity in 1925, they remembered the old tunnel and began work to bring it up to modern standards. Maybe now they thought they could do it right. By the autumn of 1925, the tunnel was plain host to a crew of brave men, supported by a work train powered by steam. They were slowly making their way along the length of the tunnel, making repairs, improving the engineering, and hopefully making the tunnel safe for future use. But even after claiming so many lives decades before, the tunnel didn't seem to be done

just yet. On October 2, while doing what they had been doing for weeks, dozens of men were working inside the tunnel when the ceiling collapsed. Most escaped, but five men were trapped inside, buried alive. To make matters worse, the steam engine exploded when the weight of the debris pressed down on it, filling the tunnel with steam and dust, and contributing to even further collapse. According to the story as it's told today, something did in fact walk out of the tunnel. But it wasn't human.

They say it was a hulking creature, covered in strips of decaying flesh, with sharp teeth and a crazed look in its eye. And because witnesses reported that blood was flowing from its mouth, many have since referred to it as the Richmond Vampire. No one could explain why the creature was there. Some suggested that it had been attracted to the carnage and had come to feed. They say that's why the early rescue attempts only found one of the missing five men, still seated at the control of the work train.

There was no sign of the other victims of the tragedy though, so some suggest perhaps the vampire had something to do with it. Witnesses say that the creature fled out the eastern end of the tunnel, passed the gathering crowd of workers, and then made its way south to Hollywood Cemetery. Some of the workmen who had managed to escape the collapse and witness the creature's getaway were able to make chase, following it through the graveyard for a distance. And then they claimed it slipped into one of the tombs, the final resting place of a man named W.W.

Poole. Poole, it turns out, was a relatively unknown accountant who had died just three years before. According to the local legend, this made sense. The blood on the mouth, the jagged teeth, the return to the mausoleum, all of it pointed to one undeniable fact that quickly spread across the city as one of the premier legends of Richmond. Poole was, of course, a vampire. It's said that people returned to the cemetery for many nights, each one eagerly awaiting

to see if the vampire would emerge from its hiding place once more. But there are no other stories that tell us what happened next. If the Richmond vampire had been active before the Churchill Tunnel incident, it seemed that he had gone into retirement immediately after. Like many tales of local lore, this story ends on an unsatisfying note. Just as the mysterious creature's trail from the collapsed tunnel finally ended in the shadowy doorway of a cold mausoleum, the story of what happened seems to end in the shadows of its own.

Much like the tunnel itself, it was now nothing more than a dead end. A funny thing happens somewhere between real life events in the past and the stories we tell each other around the campfire or dining room table. Much like the true and tried telephone game, where the message is passed from person to person through a long chain of possession, these old stories shift and change. The change is never visible. They adapt to a new culture or take on elements that are only relevant to a particular generation. But after decades, sometimes even centuries, these stories stand before us, transformed,

which is the difference between history and folklore, after all. With history, there's a paper trail, a clear image of the original that time and distance has a more difficult time eroding. Folklore is like water, forever shifting to fit the crevice as the rock breaks down. Richmond is an old city by the standards of most Americans. Yes, there are places on the East Coast that are older, but it has a storied history that makes it feel almost timeless. Jamestown, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Confederacy.

American history would be lacking something essential without the role Richmond has played through it all. Some of that history is unchanged, but some, it seems, has undergone deep transformation over the years, and the prime example of that is the story of the Richmond Vampire. The collapsed tunnel and the train inside it are all fact. There have even been modern-day efforts to rescue the train car and clear the rubble, but the tunnel is now flooded with the same groundwater that made it unstable in the first place.

The events that happened that dark day in October of 1925 were real, though, at least to a degree. A lone survivor did crawl from the wreckage, as the story tells us. His teeth were sharp, and his mouth was bloody. Even his skin, hanging from his body like wet linen bandages, is documented fact, but the survivor had a name, Benjamin Mosby. He was a 28-year-old employee of the railroad, and was described as big and strong. At the moment of the accident, he had been standing in front of the train's open coal door, shirt off, covered in sweat, and shoveling fuel into the fire.

When the tunnel collapsed, the boiler burst under the pressure, washing Mosby's body in a flood of scalding water. He somehow survived, though, crawled free from the rock and twisted metal, and walked to safety. He died the following day at the local hospital, and it was his appearance, with bloody broken teeth and skin boiled from his body in ribbons that fueled the story we still whisper about today. It's almost cliche to say it, but it is true.

Because the real-life events that birth a legend turn out to be more frightening and horrific than any folktale could ever be. In a city as old as Richmond, it should be no surprise that there's a deep well of frightening events and chilling rumors. As you walked those streets with me today, I hope the stories and revelations helped you find a new appreciation for it all. But we're not done just yet. I have one more tale from Richmond's past to share, and if you stick around through

this brief sponsored break, I'll tell you all about it. The story of Mosby is a tragedy, a tale built on the hubris of those in charge and their disregard for human life, not unlike the story of the Civil War and one particular battle. It took place about 10 miles northeast of Richmond in the small town of Cold Harbor. The area had been a hotbed of activity already, with the Battle of Gaines Mill having occurred there two years earlier in 1862. The bones of the dead had not been moved since then. They laid there for two years, soaking in the hot Virginia sun, washed clean by the

pouring rains. These morbid remnants of a not-so-distant past had been waiting for new blood to be spilled, and on May 31st of 1864, that finally arrived. During Gaines Mill, Grant's Union Army had been outnumbered almost two to one. Losses were heavy on both sides, but Lee's army still had plenty of men to continue their assault. Grant was a massacre for the Union. Cold Harbor, on the other hand, was a much different scene.

Grant's Union forces had grown to more than double Lee's military strength, which had remained about the same as it had been a few years prior. Grant assumed Lee's troops were exhausted and not ready for battle, and so he ordered a full assault. Well, Grant was right. Lee's men were tired, but so were his own, and in the time it took Grant's army to reach Lee, the Confederates had rallied more troops. By the time it was over, the Union had lost more than 1,800 soldiers, with another 9,000

wounded, while the Confederates lost only 83 and suffered 3,400 wounded. Grant tried to spin his loss for the public, but the truth is a tricky thing and as a way of getting out, and eventually so too did the generals' true feelings. I regret this assault, he later said, more than any one I have ever ordered. What Grant and every other soldier experienced during the Battle of Cold Harbor haunted them for the rest of their lives, and for visitors to the battlefield today, they continued to do so. People have reported late night sightings of phantom soldiers lumbering across the grounds,

with some recreating their own deaths in a ghastly morbid loop. Tilt your ear in just the right direction and you might hear cannons going off, or horses clip-clopping by where there are none to be found. And when the breeze rustles the tree leaves and chills the night air, it sometimes carries the scent of gunpowder across the field to the unsuspecting nostrils of battlefield explorers. According to one story, a man who had wandered onto the spot where one Colonel Tomkins had been shot in the head was stricken with what could only be described as the worst headache of his life.

Over the years, paranormal experts and investigators have come to Cold Harbor to verify the stories for themselves. Beth Brown visited the battlefield with a police escort, Officer Barry Krieg, along with a cadre of ghost hunters. Their evening was interrupted by a thick fog that would envelop them and then disappear without warning, and when they tried taking pictures of the scene, their skin crawled at the sensation of being watched. Of course, many of the men's remains were not properly interred, and so it's understandable

that there may be restless spirits to contend with, but what about Cold Harbor National Cemetery? Built in 1866, it's home to over 2,000 Union soldiers and at least 1,300 of whom are unknown, and it's just as haunted as the battlefield itself. There have been sightings of glowing orbs hovering over the gravestones, even in broad daylight. Nearby lights have also been known to flicker every now and then, perhaps in the presence of a soldier's spirit that is unable to move on.

But the most unsettling location of the battle has to be the Garthright House. It belonged to one Miles Garthrights, a Confederate soldier whose wife Margaret remained in the home while he went off to war, despite the home's close proximity to the fight. After the Battle of Cold Harbor, Union forces commandeered the house and forced Margaret into the basement. They turned it into a makeshift hospital to attend to their wounded, 97 of whom died and were buried in the front yard. It's believed by some that Margaret not only hid in the basement from the soldiers,

but had to hear men scream as they were operated on in the living room above, their blood seeping through the floorboards over her head. Today, those who visit the Garthright House may see the occasional Union ghost walking around at night, but that's not even the worst part. Visitors have witnessed another spirit on the property, that of a young girl, who splits her time between haunting the cemetery and the house. She's known to laugh or cry depending on when and where she's spotted. She was once seen skipping around in the front yard, playing and laughing, right on top of

those 97 Union soldiers who hadn't survived their surgeries. Is she the Garthright's daughter? No one knows for sure, but there is one thing we can all be certain of. When a location plays host to that amount of tragedy and death, it's bound to make a sound. A sound that can be heard for generations to come. This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with additional help from Jenna Rose, Nethercotts, and Harry Marks, and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's the book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical.

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