Highway of Tears

Highway 16 is locally known as the Highway of Tears and relates to a series of unsolved murders and disappearances of young women. The road runs between Prince George and Prince Rupert in British Columbia, Canada. 19 victims have been identified but if the range is expanded it could be up to 40 cases but I will be sticking in the 19 case boundary.

In 2005 the RCMP launched E-Pana focusing on some of the unsolved murders and disappearances of female children and young women along Highway 16. They sought to discover if there was a single serial killer or multitudes of murders.

In 2009 the police were looking for the remains of Nicole Hoar as she went missing in 2002, they were also looking for other women at the property too. The whole thing was part of the ongoing missing/dead in the area. 25th September 2012 and as part of the ongoing investigations they reported that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police linked the death of Gale Weys and Pamela Darlington to a deceased US criminal, Bobby Jack Fowler. There are said to be other persons of interest in cases but to the age of some of them and lack of evidence they are not expecting charges to be made.

The cases have come under fire from the media and locals as there is a consensus amongst some parties that half are First Nation and that until Nicole Hoar there didn’t seem so much interest. Nicole was white Caucasian and seemingly was the catalyst for finally forming a link and actual case basis forming for them all.

I feel like the best way I can give up the sheer scale/concern about this is to simply list some of those victims…

The homicides are:

• 1969, Gloria Moody found in the woods. She was 26 years old.
• 1970, Micheline Pare was last seen on highway 30 after two women dropped her off. She was 18 years old.
• 1973, Gale Weys. Bobby Jack Fowler is the prime suspect, her body was found in a ditch. She was 19 years old.
• 1973, Pamela Darlington, Bobby Jack Fowler is the prime suspect, her body was found the day after she went missing. She was 19 years old.
• 1974, Monica Ignas, she went missing on her way home from school. She was found in 1975 and had been strangled. She was 14 years old.
• 1974, Colleen MacMillan was last seen near her friends house. Her body had the traces of Booby Jack Fowler on them. She was 16 years old.
• 1976, Coreen Thomas, aged 21 days from giving birth she was struck by Richard Redekop’s truck. He was convicted originally but then charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence.
• 1978 Mary Jane Hill, 31 years hold, Prince Rupert area and found nude along highway 16; cause of death recorded as bronchitis and bronchopneumonia as a result of manslaughter.
• 1981, Maureen Mosie’s body was found the next day by a dog-walker. She was 33 years old.
• 1989, Alberta Williams, her body was found after she had been strangled and sexually assaulted. She was 24 years old.
• 1990, Kimberly Dumais, tiny infant who died after a fire with four people inside. Law enforcement determined the blaze was set on purpose. An anonymous letter claimed responsibility. Other victims were Helga Rochon, Sherri Rochon and Pauline Rochon.
• 1994, Ramona Wilson’s remains were found in 1995. She was 16 years old.
• 1994, Ramona Thiara was working as a prostitute and told a friend that she was going with a customer. She was 15 years old.
• 1994, Alishia ‘Leah’ Germaine was found murdered 9th December, stabbed to death. She was 15 years old.
• 1999, Monica McKay murdered, last seen by friends 31^st December 1999, her body was left by a dumpster.
• 2001 Ada Elaine Brown, the family believe she was assaulted and killed by a man she knew. No charges were raised.
• 2004 Kayla Rose McKay, murdered near Prince Rupert unable to determine if she was murdered or it was suicide.
• 2004 Melanie Dawn Brown, 31 years old in the Prince George area and was found dead in a basement, gunshot wound.
• 2006, Aielah Saric Auger was found dead in a ditch after going missing. She was 14 years old.
• 2013 Tara Lee Ann Williams, 40 years old and found dead alongside Blaine Albert Barfoot police asking for anyone with information to come forwards.
• 2017 Robert (Robin) Marie Sims, 65 years old and RCMP report her own vehicle was used in her murder.
• 2020 Casandra Kale, 28 years old and police noted a dead woman in car with two other occupants. Police believe all three related to one another and foul play has not been ruled out.
• 2023, Chelsey Amanda Quaw, 29 years old, her remains where found 7^th November 2023 in a wooded area on the community’s territory.

Missing people are:

• 1970-1979, Tracey Clifton, went missing last seen Prince Rupert area walking Highway 16 after an argument with her mother.
• 1970, Helen Claire Frost, Prince George area and was reported missing after 2 days thinking she was at a friends house.
• 1983, Shelly-Ann Bascu went missing, near the Athasbasca river, personal items with blood drops matching her DNA were found. She was 16 at the time.
• 1989, Doreen Jack, 26rs old and last seen around Prince Rupert. Family went missing after taking a job with daycare.
• 1989 Cecillia Anna Nikal, 1989 she also had a cousin who was murdered a few years after she went missing.
• 1990, Delphine Nickal went missing in 13th June, she was hitchhiking east from the town of Smithers, she was 15 years old at the time.
• 1995, Lana Derrick was last seen in October that year. Fowler was in jail by then and so could not have been convicted for the crime. She was 19 years old.
• 2004 Margeret Nooski, 89 years old and missing from Fraser Lake, this poor lady was suffering from dementia and struggled to walk. RCMP think she may have got lost trying to get to Prince George.
• 2005, Tamara Chipman went missing when she was 25 years old.
• 2005 Mary Madaline George, from the Prince George area, she was last seen walking towards a clinic in Prince George.
• 2005 Tamara Lynn Chapman, 22 years old and went missing, search efforts from her family was not successful.
• 2007 Bonnie Marie Joseph, 32 years old and was due in court but never showed up. Her ID and belongings were found by a lake.
• Beverly Warbrick, went missing from 2100 block of Oak Street in Prince George.
• 2011, Madison Scott vanished near the road after going to a party. Her tent and truck were located but she is still missing. madisonscott.ca
• 2014 Anita Florence Thorne, 49 years old and reported missing, they found her car, with purse inside and unlocked.
• 2017 Frances Brown, 53 years old and went missing, last seen out picking mushrooms and police launched a large search. She is deaf in one ear.

Bill Sketoe

William Sketoe was born 8th June 1818 and died 3rd December 1864, he was a Methodist Minister from Newton, Alabama and was lynched on the 3rd December giving rise to one of the areas best known ghost tales.

Many of the details given about Bill are likely to be embellishments but what is known is he lived in Newton, prior to the Civil War and that he was lynched there 3rd December, 1864. The main source seems to be from the tale from Kathryn Tucker Windham in her 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffrey…

What is said is that he may have been born in Madrid, Spain and moved to the area with his father. He seemed well liked and went into the ministry, whilst serving as a circuit rider he met Sarah Clemmons and they had eight children together. The story goes that he then joined the Southern Army during the Civil War but nothing can be confirmed via government records of the time, it seems that then his wife had fallen ill and in 1864 he returned home until she recovered.

What is fact? He was killed… he ran fowl of the Newton Home Guard, commanded by Joseph Breare, and it led to his murder. Dale County was a lawless place and there were no court sessions being held during the last two years of the war, nearby in the pine forests there were numerous deserters and Unionists who emerged and would terrorize the locals. Home Guard units like that ran by Captain Joseph Breare were used as an attempt for protection.

Two different stories emerge about Bill and his death, one says he offered up papers to say that someone had been hired to serve in his place but it was not believed and the other is that Bill had been suspected of helping the leader of a local band of deserters, John Ward, and their pro-Union guerillas. Bill was not formerly charged and there is nothing to confirm either story.

Legend goes that he was waylaid in the afternoon 3rd December, 1864 and crossed over the wooden bridge where Breare, his men and a preacher dragged him into the local woods. They forced him to crawl through the sand where they prepared to kill him, he was hauled to a waiting buggy and a rope was thrown over a Post Oak limb and was then put around his neck. A friend of Bill’s witnessed it and ran to the town to try and get help. Meanwhile they asked him if he had any last words, or asked if he might pray. Instead of praying for himself he began to pray for them instead and so angered they lashed at the horse and left him dangling from the tree limb.

They had done a poor job of the execution in their haste and Bill’s weight bent the limb of the tree where his feet touched the ground. One of the men dug a hole beneath his feet and he was then left to strangle, his friends did not get back in time. He was then buried in nearby Mt. Carmel cemetery and the city museum in Newton is said to have a cloak once belonging to his wife Sarah.

It’s said that all of the lynching party died rather unnatural deaths, and that Breare himself was struck down by a limb from a Post Oak tree, just like the type that Bill Sketoe had been hung from. The hole dug for his execution never seemed to disappear and even when filled in or covered over it didn’t take long for it to come back to play. Some locals think that people kept it clean to keep the mystery going…

In 1979 all of that ended, because a new Highway Bridge was put over the original site and the hole itself. People still visit due to the paranormal idea behind it and in 2006 Sketoe family members joined Newton officials in dedicating a monument to their ancestor near the sight of his death.

Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum

This fantastic building was listed in 1990 as a National Historic Landmark, formerly known as Weston State Hospital. It operated from 1864 until 1994 and was built on the fairly-well known Kirkbride plan.

Construction began in 1858 and the local newspapers reported “seven convict negroes” were amongst the first arrivals to work on the project. When the American Civil War broke out construction was stalled. Eventually the project came to fruition and the first patients were admitted October 1864, construction then continued until 1881.

In the period it was constructed it is worth noting that, sadly, black people were still segregated and in 1873 they build separate rooms for black patients. It was supposed to be another self-sufficient venture with a farm, dairy, waterworks, cemetery and gas as well.

It started with an ideal for 250 patients but by 1880 there were 717 and at its peak in the 1950’s there were 2,600 people crowded into the building. In 1935 a fire was started by a patient and a wing was rebuilt, clearly the place was struggling on many levels.

The population had declined by the 1980’s but it was discovered that those who could not be controlled were locked in cages. The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is now closed and used as a tourist attraction. The new owners offer historical tours and paranormal tours, it is popular in part due to the many rumours of hauntings there. TAPS, Ghost Adventures and other popular shows have filmed and investigated there.

So what are the paranormal reports? On the first floor many have reported being pushed, hearing sounds and people say they have encountered the ghost of ‘Ruth’ on the hallways, though I have no idea who Ruth is/was.

On the second floor in Ward Two people have encountered shadowy figures, near the area a man was stabbed 17 times and died; nearby two patients committed suicide via curtain poles and some EVP’s captured have clear enough warnings of ‘Get Out’.

The third floor has nurses quarters and some say they have been nurses walking the halls. There were violent female patients there on the floor and some report the sounds of their disembodied voices. Adding to the accounts was that some believe, and report to have experienced, a man named Dean who haunts where he murdered a nurse, Elizabeth, and in another nearby hall that they have caught EVP’s of someone called Big Jim too.

On the fourth floor Ward R is reportedly the creepiest and where the ghost of Lily can be contacted. There was a report of a black dog there but this makes very little sense to me. Supposedly there is another ghost known as the ‘creeper’ because it crawls and slinks around. – ghostresearch.org

 

 

Hypertrichosis

Hypertrichosis is known as werewolf syndrome but is NOT clinical lycanthropy. Clinical lycanthropy is the defined as the delusion that you are transforming, or has, into a non human and a psychological disorder based around the supernatural creature of legend. Hypertrichosis is an abnormal amount of hair-growth over the body and can be localised to one area or affect the whole body (generalised). This can be congenital and always present at birth or acquired and come after birth, in these cases it can be a side effect of drugs has associations with cancer or has been linked to eating disorders.

It is not something that can be cured in the case of congenital hypertrichosis and instead is often manager. If it has been acquired then finding out the route cause is the way to find a suitable treatment.

Many (both types) cases will result in hair reduction treatment, this however can result in scarring, skin conditions like dermatitis or hypersensitivity. Temporary hair removal may last several hours or weeks, they are purely cosmetic. Permanent hair removal uses either chemical or laser treatment that depends on the type of hair needing treatment.

Congenital versions of hypertrichosis are rare and congenital generalised hypertrichosis has been isolated to one family in Mexico but acquired is more common and not linked particularly to any one familial in particular. Historically some people used this as a way to make money by displaying themselves as a circus or sideshow or barbers.

Annie Jones was an American bearded woman from Virginia and toured with P T Barnum. She was a woman who was well-portraited and photographed. Annie Jones joined the world of P T Barnum at the age of 9 months and died in Brooklyn, in 1902 of tuberculosis. She was 37 years old, divorced from her first husband and widowed from her second.

Alice Elizabeth Doherty was born in Minneapolis and was born with around two-inches of long blonde hair all over her body. None of her known relatives had been recorded with the same or similar condition, she had blue eyes, a lot of hair and was exhibited by her parents as a sideshow attraction from the age of 2 years old. At 5 years of age, she had 5 inch long hair and by the time she was a teenager that hair was 9 inches long and despite not being interested in entertainment she carried on to support her family. She retired in 1915, gladly no doubt, and died in Dallas, Texas on 13^th June 1933.

Julia Pastrana was from Sinaloa, Mexico. She was born in 1834 with her face and body covered in black hair, she also had large ears, nose and her teeth were irregular and was a rare disease Eingival hyperplasia. There are variations of what happened to her in her early life, both accounts do say that he line in the home of Pedro Sanchez, and left the home in 1854. She ended up in America, eloped from her performing role with Theadore Lent and marrying him in Baltimore. He took over her management, they routed Europe and America being advertised as a “bear woman”. Pastrana was touring in Moscow when she gave birth to a baby bearing similar features to her own. The child survived only a few days and Pastrana suffered from post-partum depression, dying just five days later. She died 21^st March, 1860.

Petrus Gonsalus was born in Tenerife, Spain, in 1537 approximately, sources seemed to vary. “The Man of the Woods”, it is theorised that he was the inspiration for the story of Beauty and the Beast, by Gabrielle-Suzanne Bardot de Villeneuve.

He was reportedly a native of the Canary Isles who started life as a slave, at 10 years of age he was gifted to Henry II, France and stayed there for 40 years. Henry gave him an education, taught him as a young nobleman should be for the time and he met and romanced a woman called Catherine. They married and had children, Antionetta, his daughter had the same condition and so did his son. The courts of Italy and France saw the family, who were widely portraited and they were studied by famous physicians. Eventually they retired to a village in Italy and crept quietly into obscurity.

Other notes about it paint a less romantic picture, his wife was set up by Henry II’s wife to get him out of the court, Catherine was kept from seeing the man and that she fainted the first time she saw Petrus. She was still forced to wed him and yet she eventually came to love him.

Catherine was said to have given birth to 7 children, 4 of which had the same disorder as Petrus. In Italy under the care of Duke of Farnese then split the family up by giving the afflicted children away as pets. It is during this period the records became muddy and obscure. They ended up in Capimodonte, Italy and they remained there for about 40 years, married up until his death in 1618.

Perhaps it is suitably fitting that where he was buried did not get recorded, a whole life of being on show to being left alone may well be the peaceful he had hoped for,

Sources:

• thehumanmarvels.com

• wikipedia

• sideshowworld.com

• New York Times

• Mutants: On genetic variety and the human body – Armand Marie Leroi

• Medium.com

By George Wick – This file was derived from: <a href=”//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Julia_Pastrana,_a_bearded_lady._Reproduction_of_a_photograph_Wellcome_V0007256.jpg” title=”File:Julia Pastrana, a bearded lady. Reproduction of a photograph Wellcome V0007256.jpg”>Julia Pastrana, a bearded lady. Reproduction of a photograph Wellcome V0007256.jpg</a>, Public Domain, Link

London’s Death Pyramid

Imagine a slightly different London view, The Shard is a very large building but what if there was another one on the horizon? Well there almost was another one, it was a design for London that was proposed in 1820 by Thomas Wilson and it was a large pyramid to tackle the problem of where to put London’s deceased.

The Metropolitan Sepulchre was proposed to be a rather impressive 950 feet high and 94 storeys of death housing. He proposed to build a large pyramid on Primrose Hill, it would overlook St Paul’s Cathedral and most other buildings of the time. It would be rather large and ornate with a steam powered lift to raise the dead up to their resting places.

This large structure sounds rather impressive and would have fitted in with the Egyptian craze of the time, mummy tea parties as just one example, and of course quite expensive to build. It would also bee one hell of a reminder of the inevitability of the mortal coil.

The building would not have seemed an entirely bad idea in the climate of 1820’s London, the dead and where to put them was a pretty big problem. Gatherings From Graveyards would paint the picture of the stench of death oozing from all of London’s pores, and disposal of the dead, in reality, was a growing concern.

A company called the Pyramid General Cemetery Company was set up and would have cost £2,000 to build. The profit margin potential, however, far exceed the outlay. The catacombs could each house 24 bodies, rented out at £50 per vault with the potential for the higher places costing more, well some would pay to get closer to God surely?

A random tangent to this was to have the top part as an astronomical observatory.

It would have taken up 18 acres and was “supposed to be compact, hygienic and ornamental” says Catherine Arnold, Necropolis: London and it’s dead. His idea was people could picnic at Primrose Hill and overlook it.

In reality, the design was rejected by people’s concerns about the weight of it crushing Primrose Hill and a generally unpopular reception to the thing overall.

Highgate Cemetery and the others opening soon solved the problem, and put the pyramid plans on the shelf for good.

Www.ianvisits.co.uk

BBC Magazine Article

Catherine Arnold – Necropolis: London and its dead.

Exploring-London.com