That Horrid, Hissing Hag

"Detroit Free Press," November 4, 1962, via Newspapers.com

In 1961, a 28-year-old auto worker named Bill Adams, along with his wife Lillian and their five children, moved into a seemingly perfectly normal rental house on Detroit’s Martin Street.  They soon earnestly wished they had found a different place to live.  Before long, the young family found themselves in the middle of what has been described as “Michigan’s most terrifying haunting.”

Almost immediately, the Adamses sensed that there was something strange about the back bedroom.  Bill, who worked the midnight shift at a Cadillac plant, slept there during the day to avoid the noise of children playing.  He soon began having dreadful nightmares, “The kind where I’d see all kinds of horrible things and wake up screaming.  In the morning, I’d never be sure whether they were dreams or whether I had been awake all the time.”

In August 1961, Bill’s grandmother, who lived in Atlanta, Georgia, came to visit.  She spent one night in the back bedroom.  Emphasis on “one.”  Bill later said, “She told us she heard sounds like someone was trying to get in all night.  She wouldn’t sleep there again.”  One night, they locked the family dog in the bedroom and the poor creature “nearly went mad” until he was let out.

In late October 1962, Shirley Patterson, a cousin of Bill’s, came to Detroit to buy a car.  He spent the night with the Adamses.  Without any warning from anyone--which seems rather unkind--he was given the back bedroom.  Patterson later recalled, “I went to bed at about 11:30 Saturday night, right after Bill left for work.  I was in bed for only a couple of minutes, facing the wall, when something turned me over.

“Don’t ask me to describe the feeling.  All I know was that it rolled me over and then I saw it standing outside the bedroom door.

“At first I thought it was Lillian but I started to tremble.  It was a woman with long hair and she had her back to me, looking into the kitchen.”

Patterson screamed and leaped out of bed.  “At that second,” said Patterson, “every light in the house went out.”

The terrified man ran into the kitchen, where he ran into Lillian.  The lights all went on again.  Then, from the back bedroom they heard a bone-chilling “crying groan.”  This was followed by a terrible stench that sickened them both.

Unsurprisingly, neither of them got any more sleep that night.  When Bill returned home, they told him what had happened.  The trio called in the police (the third time they had done so since moving in.)  A search was made of the house and basement, but nothing was found.

Bill had never believed in ghosts, and stubbornly refused to consider that something otherworldly was going on.  He decided to sleep in the bedroom again, just to see what would happen.  While he was in bed, but still awake, he heard a noise in the room.  “I turned to look,” he later said, “and the face was inches away from me.”

“It was the most horrible thing I have ever seen.  The eyes stared past me and the mouth moved to talk but only a hissing noise came out--and a terrible stench.”

Adams ran screaming from the room, so hysterical he was pulling handfuls of hair from his head.  The same horrible smell permeated the house.

The Adamses had seen more than enough.  They gathered up their children and fled, leaving all of their possessions behind--not to mention forfeiting the month’s rent for November they had already paid.  They moved in with Lillian’s parents in Dearborn until they could find another place to live.

After the “Detroit Free Press” covered the Adamses bloodcurdling tale, the “Horrid Hag of Martin Street” became a fixture in local legend.  In 1973, the “Free Press” interviewed the then-current occupant of the home, Mrs. Grace Willis.  She scoffed at the old stories, noting that she now slept in the back bedroom--although she admitted that she couldn’t sleep unless her back was turned to the door.  The “Free Press” reported that locals had various explanations for the “haunting.”  Some believed that the Adamses invented the whole story to get back at their landlord for threatening to evict them.  Others said that the incidents were the work of a “deranged boy” lurking in the house’s basement.

Mrs. Willis did admit that one peculiar thing had happened during her six-year residence in the house.  One day, she and her sister-in-law heard what sounded like a “crashing cascade of breaking dishes” in the kitchen.  When they rushed into the kitchen, they found no broken crockery--all the dishes were neatly stacked in the cupboard.

If that incident was the work of “The Hag,” that appears to have been her swan song.  As far as is recorded, the paranormal has fled Martin Street.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

The Strange Company staffers are here to bring you this week's news from A to Z!

What the hell is a stately home?

Where the hell is Planet Nine?

Organ transplants may trigger changes in personality.  (Two of my relatives had, at different times, large blood transfusions.  Afterwards, they both had vivid dreams where they were certain they were "seeing" events in the lives of their blood donors.  There's a lot about the human body that we simply don't understand.)

On a related note, we may not know jack about evolution, either.

A really weird sound has been recorded deep in the Pacific.

Three castaways prove that cliches sometimes work.

Yet another ancient city that's rewriting history.

A particularly barbaric Neolithic human sacrifice.

A funeral that featured an arrest.

The latest theory about the Voynich Manuscript.

The origins of the phrase, "Roger that."

Medieval dogs had some pretty cool names.

More on that story I linked to earlier about the Scottish whaler stranded in the Arctic.

A murder/suicide from 1912.

The bathroom that features a Neanderthal.

WWII's Operation Title.

The strange tale of a firefighter's handprint.

Star forts and conspiracy theories.

Old Hollywood's most famous "fixer."

17th century tanks.

The case of an Indian stranded in Italy, 1879.

So, let's talk writs of replevin on corpses.

Charles Fort as UFO pioneer.

In which we learn that Joseph Stalin's granddaughter is a Buddhist antique store owner in Portland, Oregon.  It's pleasant to think that the old monster would be highly irritated at this.

Remembering the magazine devoted to flappers.

Benjamin Franklin on 1760s British politics.

A wife and a vampire go to court.

An important farm laborer strike.

A sci-fi author's strange double life.

Charles Darwin's correspondents.

Some curious ways of holding land in medieval England.

Culinary fusion goes a long way back.

When scientists got drunk on nitrogen for God and country.

The last of London's phone boxes.

The Maya Snake Kings.

Something weird just fell into the Delaware River.

Emily Dickinson wasn't all that reclusive.

The "walk of shame."

A shrewd--and murderous--rascal.

London's time-traveling tomb.

The "Peanuts" character who wound up with an ax in her head.

An ancient monument has been discovered in France, and everyone's puzzled about it.

The origins of the phrase, "left for dead."

Yet another mysterious disappearance in the wilderness.

Finding Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

The many descendants of Charlemagne.

That's it for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll meet a hissing ghost in Detroit.  In the meantime, here's one of my favorites from back in the day.

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I have a particular fondness for obscure, unimportant, but intriguing little mysteries.  One such example appeared in the “London Morning Chronicle,” April 21, 1809:

Nevis, Feb. 7, 1809.

“Dear Sir,

"I beg leave to mention the following circumstances, and leave to your better judgment the propriety of making the same public.-- 

"About a fortnight since, the Overseer on the Camp Estate discovered a chest, floating in the wash of the sea, and with the assistance of several negroes he had it brought on shore. On opening it, it was found to contain a female corpse wrapped in several folds of seer cloth, and a quantity of tea was spread between each fold. The box or coffin was also filled up with tea, to the quantity, it was supposed, of two hundred weight. The body was in a tolerable state of preservation, and had the appearance of having been that of a person about 30 years of age, rather corpulent, with a remarkable handsome hand, a good set of teeth, and long dark hair--the mouth had been filled with tea, and some moisture having occasioned the tea to swell, left the teeth exposed; on touching them one fell in. The box was better than six feet long, and made remarkably strong, having 16 iron clamps, the whole of it covered with cloth, which had Burgundy pitch rubbed over it, and was perfectly water tight. It must have been in the sea a very long time, as it had a number of barnacles upon it.

“The wood was supposed to be what is called in the East Indies, Teak wood--Around the middle of the box was a tarred rope, which had the appearance of having suspended it, or been a lashing to it. 

"Should the publishing of this account be the cause of making it known to the relatives of the deceased, it may prove grateful to their feelings, to know that the body was decently interred, in this island, and every attention paid it. 

"I remain, dear Sir, yours, very truly, JN. COLHOUN MILLS.

To the very Rev. the Dean of St, Asaph.”

Although we’ll never know who this woman was, it’s easy to reconstruct what probably happened.  In the past, tea leaves were sometimes used to preserve the dead, although as tea was very expensive back then, it was not commonly used.  Our mystery corpse was likely a wealthy woman who died far from her native land.  Relatives arranged for her to be embalmed and shipped back home for burial.  Sometime during the voyage, the boat encountered some disaster at sea which sank it, killing everyone on board.  The coffin--the only survivor of the wreck, you might say--drifted for who knows how long before winding up on the shores of Nevis.

The Kidwelly Mystery

In 1898, a Yorkshire solicitor named Harold Greenwood and his wife Mabel moved to the small Welsh town of Kidwelly.  The couple eventually had four children, and their household was further supplemented by Mabel’s unmarried sister, Edith Bowater.  Edith furnished a small room for herself and contributed to the family expenses.

Greenwood’s practice in nearby Llanelly was not very successful, perhaps at least partly because of his unpopularity--gossipers thought he was too much of a bon vivant with an eye for the ladies.  In contrast, Mabel was well-liked, and active in the social pastimes of the area.  Despite Harold’s marginal income, the family was able to keep a fine mansion, Rumsey House.  Mrs. Greenwood came from a wealthy and prominent family, and had her own private income which kept the family in more than comfortable circumstances.  Although the residents of Kidwelly never warmed to Harold, he and Mabel were considered to be a happy and affectionate couple.

Mabel Greenwood was a bit of a hypochondriac.  Although the doctors never found much of anything wrong with her, she thought of herself as “delicate” with a “weak heart,” and lived in terror of developing cancer.  From the beginning of 1919, Mabel told the family doctor, Thomas Griffiths, that she frequently had pains around her heart and abdomen.  He shrugged it off as the symptoms of “change of life,” and gave her various innocuous potions.  However, her health continued to deteriorate.

Life in Kidwelly puttered along in an unremarkable fashion until Sunday, June 15, 1919.  The day began pleasantly enough.  Mabel wrote letters and did some reading.  Harold tinkered with his car.  The couple, along with their 21-year-old daughter Irene and 10-year son Kenneth (the other two Greenwood children were at boarding school) met for lunch at 1 p.m.  Their cook had prepared a joint with vegetables on the side, with gooseberry tart and custard for dessert.  A bottle of burgundy was provided for the adults.  Harold did not have any of the wine, but Mabel enjoyed a glass.  After the meal, Mabel had a brief nap, after which she rested on a deck chair on their lawn.

Around 6:30 p.m., Mabel began to complain of heart pains.  Harold gave her some brandy, after which she had spasms of vomiting.  She thought the gooseberry tart had disagreed with her.  Dr. Griffiths was called in.  He diagnosed Mabel’s malady as an ordinary stomach upset.  He prescribed sips of brandy and soda, along with a bismuth mixture.

An hour later, Mabel’s closest friend, Florence Phillips, came to visit.  After learning from Harold that Mabel was ill, Florence asked the District Nurse, Elizabeth Jones, to examine Mabel.  Nurse Jones thought that something was very wrong with Mrs. Greenwood, but Dr. Griffiths continued to insist it was merely a temporary stomach bug.  Sadly, Nurse Jones was proven correct when, at 3 a.m., Mabel died, aged only 47.

Mrs. Greenwood’s strange and sudden end had many people in Kidwelly giving Mr. Greenwood the side-eye.  Even so, the matter probably would not have been pursued any further if not for the fact that, after enduring a whole four months of lonely widowerhood, Harold married one Gladys Jones, the daughter of an old friend.  It was widely rumored that their romance had begun some time before Mabel’s untimely death.  (As a side note, while Harold was preparing to marry Gladys, he also proposed to Dr. Griffith’s sister May.  It’s always prudent to have a backup plan.)  The scandal that erupted from this whirlwind marriage was so intense that it was felt that an exhumation of the first Mrs. Greenwood was called for.  The autopsy found no sign of heart disease, but it did discover a grain of arsenic in Mabel’s body.  The next thing Harold knew he was standing trial for murder.

Greenwood had the great good fortune to be represented by Edward Marshall Hall.  Hall has made previous appearances on this blog, always in the role of “The Murderer’s Best Friend.”  During his long and distinguished career, this brilliant barrister managed to save an impressive list of accused villains from the hangman--whether they deserved to be saved or not.

Greenwood during his trial

During the trial, Hall did his usual masterly job of destroying a seemingly open-and-shut case.  He argued that Mabel succumbed to chronic, but perfectly natural health problems that went overlooked thanks to Dr. Griffiths being an obvious quack.  The presence of arsenic in Mabel’s body was undoubtedly due to the medicines Griffiths had prescribed.  Also noted in Harold’s defense was the fact that with Mabel’s death, her private income, on which her husband had so heavily depended, went into a trust fund for her children.

The prosecution’s case was a simple one:  Harold, wishing to marry another woman, doctored Mabel’s lunchtime Burgundy with weed killer.  However, this theory instantly crumbled into dust when young Irene Greenwood testified that she also had a glass from the bottle of wine at lunch, and two more glasses at supper.  That, as they say, was that.  The prosecution could mutter all they wanted about Irene committing perjury to save her father’s neck, but, of course, they couldn’t prove it.  (Oddly, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to the Crown lawyers that Harold might have put poison in one of Mabel’s many bottles of patent medicine--bottles which all mysteriously vanished after her death.)

Harold may have been acquitted in a courtroom, but the jury of public opinion thought otherwise.  He became such a pariah, he and his new wife changed their name to “Pilkington,” moved to a tiny village in Herefordshire, and earnestly hoped the world would forget about them.  Unfortunately for Harold, the controversy over his first wife’s death lingered for the rest of his days.  In 1922, he won £150 in damages after a waxworks exhibit in Cardiff included his effigy in their Chamber of Horrors.  Later that year, he wrote for “John Bull” an account of the murder trial of his fellow accused wife-poisoner, our old friend Major Herbert Armstrong.  Facing bankruptcy, Harold applied for the position of Clerk to Ross Urban Council, but was rejected.  Broken in his finances, his reputation, and his health, 55-year-old Greenwood died a sad death in January 1929.  Whether Greenwood was innocent of his first wife’s death or not (true-crime authors still argue over that question,) he certainly paid a high price for his hasty remarriage.

Weekend Link Dump

 

"The Witches' Cove," Follower of Jan Mandijn

This week's Link Dump is hosted by Sarah, the charming cat of the Metropolitan Hotel in Brockton, Massachusetts!

What in hell were the Oakville Blobs?

The dramatic life of an 18th century violinist.

How some 2,000 year old skulls are rewriting history.

Spring in the East End.

Solving a medieval money mystery.

The brothers: a tale from WWI.

Remembering a primatologist who loved bonobos.

A tale of being lost in the Arctic.

A 70,000 year old mystery has been solved.  Maybe.

Idi Amin's "White Rat."

A mailman who had one hell of a route.

The dog who was sentenced to life in prison.

The Milky Way in ancient Egyptian mythology.

If you love your double boiler, thank alchemy.

The mystery of bird brains.

Five stories about siblings.

The butcher's cat who came back.

Darius the Great, "King of Kings."

So, is Japan's nine-tailed fox happy or not?

A female warrior of the skies.

The eclipse that saved Christopher Columbus.

That planned Saudi megacity is in some trouble.  Hell, when I first heard about this project, I thought it was insane.

Some new discoveries at Pompeii.

300,000 year old wooden tools.

Kitty Fisher, celebrity courtesan.

The Rational Dress Reform movement.

Archaeologists have discovered another ancient henge.

Mount Shasta, one of the weirdest places on Earth.

The ghosts of Bethnall Edge.

Immigration at the Port of Philadelphia.

The cave of the giant skeletons.

The women of the Norman Conquest.

A feud between two prominent lawyers turns deadly.

Two unsolved murders of teenage boys.

The story behind an 18th century settlement for growing flax.

A famed alien abduction story.

That's all for this week!  See you on Monday, when we'll look at a mysterious poisoning.  In the meantime, how about a little Mongolian folk-metal?

Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

This little oddity appeared in the “Millville Daily Republican,” December 28, 1953:

Mrs. Joseph Davison's canaries, which she raises as a hobby, did not get their usual attention last night. And little wonder! Mrs. Davison, who lives on Quaker St. in Port Elizabeth, was frightened away from the outbuilding in which she raises the birds by an eery-looking "thing" that gave off a ghoulish light and hovered closely overhead.

It all happened at about 11 o'clock last night. Mr. Davison had retired and Mrs. Davison went into the back yard for a last look at her canaries. She usually checks the heater in the building and does a few other chores just before retiring.

As she neared the outbuilding, Mrs. Davison reports, she was startled by a brilliant, greenish light, which shone down on her from above. Looking up, she told a Daily Republican reporter this morning, she saw a flat, oval-shaped object, somewhat larger than a shoebox, hovering around a willow tree. She said the object came to a point In the back.

Frightened, Mrs. Davison ran into the house, and flipped off the lights. Peering through a window, she says the object flew from one willow tree to another and then disappeared. The Port Elizabeth resident said today that this is the second time in two years she has seen the same object. The mystery is still unsolved.

The Electric Poltergeist

"Arizona Republic," October 17, 1988, via Newspapers.com

Strictly speaking, the following tale might not be a “poltergeist” account.  However, it is definitely weird enough to qualify as a Fortean experience of some sort.

Bob and Karen Gallo lived with their two children in what appeared to be a perfectly normal suburban house in the perfectly normal Chicago suburb of Orland Hills.  On March 14, 1988, “perfectly normal” went out the window when 14-year-old Dina Gallo suddenly heard a popping noise, which was followed by sparks shooting from an electrical outlet which were so fierce they set some nearby curtains on fire.  Fortunately, Dina was able to put out the blaze.  When the fire department was called in, they could find no reason for what had happened.

Several days later, Dina saw that the plug to their microwave was sending out smoke.  A repairman found nothing wrong with the appliance.

Soon after this, other family members heard the popping noise, after which they smelled smoke.  When they rushed to the room where the sounds emanated, they found that some drapes and an area of the carpet had caught fire, but, oddly, the blaze had already gone out on its own.  A short time later, a desk and a set of curtains in another room caught fire.

By this point, the Gallos had so many visits from the Orland Hills Fire Department that they were practically part of the family.  The firefighters were perplexed.  Not only could they never find any cause for the fires, but they noted that the fires were strangely arbitrary.  Often, items closest to the fire were untouched, while more remote objects were incinerated.  Engineers came out to inspect the home’s electrical system.  The local electric company checked the outside lines.  All seemed in perfect working order.  What was most inexplicable was, when all electricity to the house was shut off during the testing, the smoke and fires continued.  Finally--not knowing what else to do--the home’s whole electrical system was replaced.

This extreme measure appeared to make someone--or something--angry.  Life in the Gallo household only got more alarming.  Not only did the new outlets shoot out sparks as badly as the old ones did, the family began occasionally seeing a thick white fog that smelled of sulfur.  Meters used to test for the presence of carbon monoxide and other hazardous gases found nothing.

On April 7, the white fog appeared, followed by burn marks around some of the outlets.  A two-foot-long blue flame shot out of one of them.  A mattress suddenly burst into flames.

It was only after this that the Gallos learned from neighbors that long before they moved in, their house had a reputation for being haunted.  This inspired them to consult with a local investigator of the paranormal.  He concluded that young Dina appeared to be the focus of the pyromaniac spirit, as she had usually been somewhere nearby when the fires broke out.  (However, on at least one occasion, nobody was at home when blazes started.)

After consulting with their home insurance company, the Gallos decided they had no choice but to tear down the house completely, and build another one in its place.  The insurance settlement did not cover the cost of rebuilding, so in order to recoup their investment, the Gallos were forced to sell the house and move elsewhere.  Fortunately, the new owners were left to live in peace.