Haunt This

I absolutely can not get enough ghost stories. I have always been fascinated and curiously admire old spooky houses thinking they may have a ghost. In high school I had quite a collection of ghost stories, hauntings, paranormal phenomena, etc. My favorite book was Amityville Horror Conspiracy. I know that many stories are exaggerated or even made up and that there are many that think the idea of a place being haunted is absurd. This book was interesting because it argued that the famous Amityville haunting was a hoax. I have read the book more than once and still believe that the place was definitely haunted, but it made me aware of how things can be manipulated and strewn to make people believe things that are false. This page will be on hauntings. I encourage anyone to tell their own stories or favorite haunting or even why you make think it is all nonsense…..

 

 

H. H. Holmes -

Dr. Henry Howard Holmes

 

His real name was Herman Webster Mudgett, but understandably he used the alias Docter Henry Howard Holmes. He is known for admitting to27 murders in a Chicago hotel. Nine of them were confirmed true, but no one really knows how many people he has killed. Many have written or made films about Holmes in attempt to let the world know about this famous serial killer. The Devil in the White City by Erik Lawson, Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago by Harold Schechter, and a film documentary by John Borowski called H. H. Holmes: America’s First Serial Killer.

click to check out these photos on flickr

 

The book – Devil in the White                  

City by Erik Lawson                                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Holme’s story sounds horrible. Apparently, (click to see full article)

The house, or “The Castle” as it was called, was completed just in time for the 1893 World’s Fair. It contained over 100 rooms. The first floor was occupied by shops and boutiques, and the third floor housed his personal offices and living quarters. The middle floor would prove to be one of the most terrible real-life houses of horror imaginable.

The mansion’s middle floor was filled with doors that opened to brick walls, stairways to nowhere, an elevator without a shaft and a shaft without an elevator.

There was an airtight and soundproof vault, torture chambers, dissecting tables, a crematorium, chemical vats, quicklime pits, and human-sized greased chutes leading from the living quarters to the cellar.

Peepholes were everywhere. The bedrooms were equipped with asphyxiating gas pipes connected to a control panel in Dr. Holmes’ closet, so he could murder his guests at will.

Dr. Holmes was also said to have an “elasticity determinator,” a machine he claimed could stretch experimental subjects to twice their normal length in order to produce a race of giants. Those who viewed it (and lived) said it appeared to be a medieval torture rack.

Holmes, a charismatic and charming doctor, had little trouble collecting his victims. He repeatedly advertised his “boardinghouse” and attracted many unassuming young women. Repeatedly they willingly walked into his “Castle,” but not out. The poor girls would be tortured until they delivered all their possessions to him, then murdered. Their bodies would be thrown down a chute into vats of acid and lime, then cremated.

This was one of the better sites I found on the “murder castle” story:

http://www.prairieghosts.com/holmes.html