Manteno State Hospital

It opened in December 1930 and at the time was a cutting edge facility, doctors had cottages and dedicated staff to treat their mentally-ill patient. Patients were able to contribute to the facility by growing crops and gaining work skills. In 1939 this changed, the Manteno Madness struck. It was typhoid fever and the administrators were slow to respond. By the time it was contained it had sadly caused 49 patient deaths.

During the 1940’s and 1950’s the population swelled, it was designed for 3,600 patients and 760 staff but by 1953 they had 5,300 patients. The staff had been halved and the overcrowding continued, this and underfunding led to treatable diseases becoming lethal, it led to the premature death of thousands of patients.

Manteno became a testing ground for government scientists and psychiatrists in the 1950’s, the government used the patients for testing the effects of Malaria and uncontrolled STD’s. The area still contains ice-baths used for schizophrenics to break their fits. Marteno also became a TB facility with a very bad reputation.

In 1985 the facility was closed and converted into a veterans’ home. The state hospital cemetery, located nearby, has the remains of 4,000 patients who died at the hospital.

Consequently the place is rumoured to be haunted, and is located in Kankakee County around 90 minutes away from Chicago. The locals don’t seem to happy about people wandering around so be polite and respectful. The only cottage not used for business now is the Morgan Cottage. The Morgan Cottage is at the corner of Juniper Street and West Evergreen Street.

The cottage is said to be in a bad shape and it is best to go during the day, with company. It is out in the middle of the fields and so very quiet, good for investigations but do not go to the main hospital unless you want to encounter the security who will call the police.

UFO Attacks on Washington D.C

(Due to the time period this happened I am not using UAP, I am using UFO)

In 1947 President Harry Truman, in front of a press conference was asked if he had ever seen any flying saucers, his response was “only in the newspapers”. In 1952 he was not planning to run for another term, probably down to low approval ratings, the Cold War, The Korean War and the 1945 bombings of Japan.  In 1952 he was president for a second term when this happened!

19^th July 1952, Washington National Airport, and Ed Nugent (air traffic controller) spotted seven lights on the screen in front of him. There were no planes scheduled, and he called his manager, Harry Barnes, “flying saucers”. In the tower another controller saw it blip, it was a bright light, and it was hovering, then it took off a high-speed using impossible angles to manoeuvre.  Harry Barnes also saw the lights were moving over the city, and a pilot waiting to take off reported seeing a strange light.

In 1947 President Harry Truman, in front of a press conference was asked if he had ever seen any flying saucers, his response was “only in the newspapers”. In 1952 he was not planning to run for another term, probably down to low approval ratings, the Cold War, The Korean War and the 1945 bombings of Japan.  In 1952 he was president for a second term when this happened!

19^th July 1952, Washington National Airport, and Ed Nugent (air traffic controller) spotted seven lights on the screen in front of him. There were no planes scheduled, and he called his manager, Harry Barnes, “flying saucers”. In the tower another controller saw it blip, it was a bright light, and it was hovering, then it took off a high-speed using impossible angles to manoeuvre.  Harry Barnes also saw the lights were moving over the city, and a pilot waiting to take off reported seeing a strange light.

Harry Barnes called Andrews Air Force base, 10 miles way who said that they had seen nothing. They then called back a short while later to confirm that they had in fact seen lights. They had moved over the city, the Whitehouse and in response two USA Air Force F-94 jets from New York Castle Air Force Base, Delaware were deployed. The reports of lights ended soon after, the last detected lights on the radar were at 05.30.

26^th July at 20:15 that night an air stewardess reported she had seen lights above her plane on a flight into Washington, before that at Andrews Air Base they had seen more of them, and some were travelling at 7,000 miles an hour!

This was all great news for the press, hot sales, and all but probably not good for the top brass handling the situation. The CIA formed a special intelligence department for the subject, and Edward Tauss reported for the group that most of the sightings could be explained. He did however recommend the agency continue to monitor the situation.

29^th July and there were not more reported sightings, the Air Force called a press conference. Air Force Major-General John Samford and Roger Ramsey stated that the visual sightings could be attributed to meteors an shooting stars, that the radar had something called temperature inversion and this was present on both evenings. Captain Ruppelt also spoke of an incident in Japan in 1950, that was put down to a flock of ducks…

So what do you think happened? I find this interesting for sure!

https://youtu.be/OKNkF34KLCk?si=a0pnmP5rFOyzIpEQ

Sources:

Wikipedia

The report on Unidentified Flying Objects – Edward J Ruppert

US Project Blue Book, UFO Investigation (Press minutes)

National Archives Museum (museum.archives.org)

Federation of American Scientists

The New York Times

BBC.com

PBS.org

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.

Bleeding House

Atlanta, 11^th September 1987, and a strange mystery occurred that has the police and those involved quite baffled. William Winston, 79 years old and his wife, Minnie Clyde Winston, 77 years old, were both in their late 70’s at the time of the strange event. Interestingly depending on the source you get 8th September 1987 as well, the house is listed as 1114 Fountain Drive, but I believe some sources use the date of the edition of the Lawrence World Journal as the event date, not taking into account it would have been printed after the fact.

Real Paranormal Experiences state that Winnie spotted a pool of blood on the bathroom floor after getting out of her bath, that she realised it was also coming from the walls as well and on opening the door she found it was in the hallway. 

They found blood in the basement and four of the six rooms of the house, and called the police due to a very valid concern. The house currently states it has seven rooms, but when it was built in 1945 it had six rooms, so reports will vary again depending on the source you go to. 

The police took samples of the blood away because they were insistent that it was not theirs, both the occupants have type A blood and the tests came back to say that the blood type on the samples was O. Detective Steve Cartwright was said to have gone out to investigate and his team searched the house for hours, they found no one there hiding or otherwise apart from the two occupants. 

Initially they thought it might have been Williams’s blood, he was on dialysis and they were trying to rule out various options. It was not the case however and both people tested means they have no leads but it’s really odd that they found nothing else.

The concern is that there is no sign of a crime but plenty of blood, if this was a hoax there seems no reasoning for it either. The mystery seems to be heightened that there’s no sign of a homicide in terms of a body but to find blood spattering around the house would certainly have been distressing for the elderly couple if they had no idea what was going on. There was no further incident after that one evening. 

https://apnews.com/article/cd08567c68e800edf8b9123dc6828b37

The Bleeding House on Fountain Drive

Black Dahlia

Elizabeth Short was an American woman who was murdered January, 1947 at 22 years old. Short was born in Boston, USA, on 29th July 1924. Her father lost most of his money in 1929 when the stock market collapsed. In 1930 he parked his car on a bridge and it was presumed that he had committed suicide, only years later he was found alive and kicking in California. Model father!

At 19 years old she had reconnected and went to live with her father, they moved to Los Angeles in 1943. She left after an argument and somehow ended up at Santa Barbara, where she was arrested for underage drinking. She ended up in Florida and met Major Matthew Michael Gordon, Jnr. She told her friends he had written to her to propose marriage while he was recovering from injuries in a place crash whilst serving in India. She accepted the offer but he died in a second crash 10th August 1945. Short then came back to Los Angeles July 1946. She spent the last six months around southern California, mostly L.A.

15th January 1947, the naked body of Short was found in two pieces on a vacant lot in Leimet Park. A local resident, Betty Bersinger, found her as she was walking with her three-year-old daughter. Originally she thought it was a mannequin, when she realized it was a corpse she fled to call the police.

Short’s body had been washed by the killer, it was drained of blood and her mouth had been slashed from lips to ears. Her body showed horrific signed of violence and the cause of death was eventually determined as hemorrhaging from the lacerations to her face and shock due to the blows on her head.

A reporter from the Los Angeles Examiner got hold of her mother, they told her that Short had won a beauty competition to get information on her private life. Once the press had as much as they needed they told her about her daughters murder. The papers offered to fly her out, to stop her getting to police and other press with the idea of getting exclusive content being more important than the truth and solving a murder. It was the press that created the image of the prowling Black Dahlia, this adventuress woman that got herself into trouble and murdered.

Over the years more than 50 men and women have tried to confess to the murder. Short was finally buried and her mother moved to be closer to where her daughter was laid to rest. There were other rumours at the time suggesting she was pregnant but there is nothing in any casework to state this. Her unresolved murder is regularly revisited and has been made into t.v documentaries, a book and a film.

Timesuck NSFW on the case.

 

Elizabeth Short in 1946.