Evil Haunted and Cursed Murder Houses

Can a place be evil? Is it possible for so many atrocities and death and anguish to seep into a place and permeate in to the point that it actually becomes, in a sense, malevolent? Throughout history, there have been those places around which orbit murder, suffering, and grotesqueries to the point that they are saturated with evil, and in many cases, these places are haunted, cursed, or both. These are some of those places. 

Lying out in the dim woods near Charlottesville, Virginia, at the end of a meandering dirt road winding under arches of ancient-looking gnarled trees is a stately old house that is one of the oldest in the area. The land was originally acquired in 1724 by Major Thomas Carr, better known as the brother-in-law of Thomas Jefferson himself, for unspecified “services to the crown,” after which the sprawling house, called Dunlora Mansion, more a large farmhouse really, was erected in 1730. After that, the history seems to have been pretty mundane, just another rich person’s plantation estate, but perhaps because of its location, tucked away in deep forest in the 1900s, it began to accrue some interesting legends about it, and has earned itself a reputation as a witch's den full of ghosts, madness, and murder.

It was around this time that the stories say the Dunlora Mansion apparently was owned by a reclusive woman, who, rumor had it, was a nefarious witch. The area, which had been a popular site for camping in earlier times, gradually became a place to be avoided by around 1920, and there were numerous tales of people seeing strange things in the woods near the mansion. Shadow figures, strange rituals, mystery lights, these are just some of the oddities people reported seeing through the trees, and when the old woman died it apparently only got worse, her ghost supposedly roaming the area and vehemently chasing trespassers away. Adding to these spooky legends was the persistent claim that there was a weed-choked, overgrown graveyard nearby, hidden amongst the trees that had been the final resting place of the previous owner’s slaves.

By far the most pervasive scary story attributed to Dunlora Mansion is that of a group of people who perhaps got a little closer than the legendary witch wanted. This apparently happened in the summer of 1920, when a group of six Boy Scouts and their Scout Leader were in the area on a camping excursion. They had not really been acquainted with all of the spooky lore surrounding the eerie place, and perhaps foolishly chose to set up their campsite right within the notorious, forlorn property of Dunlora Mansion. At first, things were pretty normal, the group enjoying dinner and a quiet night while sitting around their campfire telling stories, but according to the tale, it was the last thing they would ever do.

It was the middle of the night when the Scout Leader was awoken by some sort of scratching sounds and what almost sounded like a grumbling noise coming from the vicinity of the boys’ tents. Thinking that it was maybe some wild animal prowling about or just the kids messing around, he got up, grabbed his flashlight, and went out in the night to see what it was and to chase it off or to admonish his charges. When he got to the tents, there was no sign of any animal, and indeed, there was no sign of the boys either. The tents were empty, the flaps fluttering and rustling in the slight breeze, and all around there was a crushing quiet calm, his calls to them answered with silence. The stabs of light from his flashlight illuminated only the trees, nothing more, but at this point, he was not yet scared, as he figured they had wandered off to explore or were just pulling a practical joke. When he stalked off into the woods to find them, he wasn’t really truly frightened yet, but he would be.

After some time of stumbling through the brush and trees, futilely calling out to the boys and not finding any sign of them, he purportedly noticed a light flickering off in the distance through the murk of night. Not knowing if it was perhaps the flashlight of the boys, he crept towards it, and soon found that the light was set within the looming shadow of an old, decrepit house, feral and rotting away, squatted there in the forest. He had found Dunlora Mansion, and trapped behind one of its cracked windows was this one, dancing light, as if cast by a candle, feeble yet defying the wind. It seemed as if the boys might have gone within its dusty walls to explore, but there was no response to their names being shouted repeatedly. In fact, nobody seemed to be home at all despite that maddening glimmering candlelight that stood defiantly in that window. He went to knock on the door, only for it to go creaking open, totally unlocked and seemingly not having been locked in decades. He went inside.

The interior was every bit as unkempt and deteriorated as the outside, with moldy furniture scattered about, a thick layer of grime upon the floor, and a film of dust frosting everything, and it seemed as if it had not been lived in for some time. He searched the filthy old abandoned house, and it was not until he was about to leave to continue looking in the woods that he apparently heard what sounded like a child's voice coming from somewhere in the bowels of the house’s cellar. Having apparently never seen a horror movie before, the Scout Leader went right down those rickety, rotted-out stairs to find himself in a wide-open cinder block room draped in blackened shadows that almost seemed to cling to everything in there, only sluggishly banished by the flashlight. According to the version of the story he found either nothing or a single Boy Scout hat on the floor, but every version agrees on what happened next.

As he waved his light about, trying to push back the stubborn veil of shadows, the beam apparently came about to cast upon the ancient-looking face of an old woman standing there in that room with him, and what made it even worse was that she had an insane smile plastered upon her face, with yellowed teeth sharpened into points. Was this the owner of the house or something else? The Scout Leader, very unsettled by this point, did not wait to find out; instead, bolting right back up those stairs to go careening out back into that forbidding forest, regurgitated by the ominous house into the gloomy trees. According to the story, he then tripped over something in his path, his foot hitting it with a wet thud. It was no log or tree stump, but rather one of his missing Boy Scouts, lying there upon a mix of mud and blood, the stomach opened up like a zipper to reveal the entrails underneath. As the Scout Leader gasped in horror, his beam illuminated a row of bodies, the other scouts all lined up and similarly disemboweled.

The police would purportedly find the Scout Leader the next day, lying half-conscious on the side of the road in a shocked stupor, and when they went to the campsite, it turned out that all of the boys were back in their tents, yet just as dead as they had been the previous evening, some of their organs roasting over a dying campfire. The Scout Leader babbled on about what had happened, but this was met with raised eyebrows and did not keep him from being arrested for murder and eventually committed to an insane asylum. In the meantime, it is said that seven old, twisted trees would suddenly spring up in the area practically overnight, where none had been before, supposedly conjured up to house the spirits of the dead scouts and the sanity of their leader.

Interestingly, in more modern times, the surrounding area has been somewhat developed into an upscale private residential district. It is mostly quiet except for the myriad seekers of macabre curiosity, who come snooping around hoping to see something supernatural, and a few have succeeded, coming away with tales of seeing the ghosts of the boys or even the witch herself. In one account posted on the site Saturnsmoons, the witness says that he and some friends went to investigate the area, and he explains:

“It’s fairly easy to find the road you need. Dunlora is mostly known for being a rich neighborhood, but while you’re driving along the main road in the subdivision, there will be a road that clearly does not belong. It’s a gravely dirt road. I already had a sense of foreboding when we turned onto the road. As we continued our drive down the road, I spied a wispy translucent something at the top left of my windshield. It couldn’t have been a tree branch because the majority of the trees are bare, plus the last I checked, trees don’t grow wispy objects.

We eventually made it fairly far back when we came across two stone pillars on either side of the road ahead of us. Beyond these pillars was absolute darkness. Immediately we all had a reaction of SOMETHING not wanting us to be there. We all had this strong feeling at the same time. I immediately turned the truck around and we got the hell out of there. I wish we had gotten pictures but at that moment we all just wanted to leave. One of girls with me has friends who previously explored the area and they had the same feelings about the place that we did. On Tuesday evening we will be returning with a posse of people to explore.

I don’t normally get this way about places. My legs were shaking during the drive away from there. Whatever it could have possibly have been didn’t follow us because that feeling left after we got off that road. A part of me thinks that it was all in our imagination and there are rational explanations for everything while the other part of me knows there was something there that didn’t want us there.”

It is all an incredible story, but is there any truth to it, or is this all an urban legend? Unfortunately, there are many things that point to this possibly being the latter. Newspaper accounts and police records show no evidence of the Boy Scout murders that supposedly took place here. There is also the fact that the caretaker of the Dunlora Mansion, Kenny Taylor, has claimed that the same family has owned the house since its construction, making one wonder where the mysterious witch comes into all of this, or if she was a relative or not. The story also mostly took off when it was released onto the Internet in 2016 and went viral, meaning that there is a good chance this was a creepypasta that sort of took on a life of its own. Yet there are still plenty of reports from people claiming to have been there and that all of this is true, so what are we to make of this? Whether it is merely a tall tale or there is something more to it, the Dunlora Mansion continues to draw thrill seekers in, much to the chagrin of locals looking to keep them out. Legend or not, it is an intriguing tale that will probably live on no matter what the truth may be.

Moving along on our tour of haunted murder houses, we come to the settlement of Quindaro, Kansas, in what is now Kansas City, which originally began life in late 1856, created by abolitionists along the bank of the Missouri River as a resistance to stop the westward spread of slavery and to serve as an effort to make Kansas a free state. The town soon saw a deluge of migrants who were trying to help secure Kansas as a free territory, and became an important runaway-slave settlement and port of entry for abolitionists and free state activists, with Quindaro heavily involved in aiding the underground railroad at the time, helping slaves who had escaped from Missouri. When Kansas eventually became a free state, its growth slowed somewhat, and parts of it became abandoned. It still functioned for some time as a gathering place for former slaves, and in 1865, the Quindaro Freedman's School was established, which was the first black school west of the Mississippi River. It was a very important town in its time, but it also has a secret dark history of a house that seems to have been hungry for blood, and which proved to be a magnet for strange phenomena and was rumored to be cursed.

It was at about this time when in 1867, a Mrs. Wilhelmina Miller and her husband moved to a modest farmhouse in Quindaro, and it did not take too long before things went south. Mrs. Miller began having an affair with a farmhand by the name of Manz, and it was no secret to anyone at all. She would apparently do little to hide the affair, and was even caught in the act by Mr. Miller on several occasions, who just seemed to try and look the other way as much as possible. Yet, one day it seems as if he wasn’t prepared to be cuckolded anymore, and he snapped, sneaking up behind the two lovers one day to blow Manz’s head off before running off to be found hanging from a rafter in the barn from an apparent suicide. So far, so dark, but this property was just getting started.

Mrs. Miller hired a new farmhand by the name of Theodore Seidrich to replace the one whose head had been blown off, and she also started living with a new boyfriend, who was a soldier. Unfortunately, Miller was soon having relations with the new strapping young farmhand as well. The soldier boyfriend found out about it and left, which is what the farmhand should have done, it appears, as he would soon after be found dead in an apparent accidental overdose of medicine given to him by Miller. It is unclear whether she had intentionally killed the young man or not, but it is curious that she, straight after this, shacked up with a new boyfriend named John Fanschel, who ended up leaving after becoming increasingly spooked about the rumors he was hearing about his new girlfriend and the house they were living in, now developing a reputation as being haunted. After he left, one day, people just stopped seeing Miller around, and it was assumed that she must have abandoned the property and left town. Even at this point, locals were whispering that the Miller house was haunted and even cursed, but they would soon have more reason to think this.

It seems as if another farmer in the area decided to go check out the creepy abandoned Miller farm one day in 1899 after one of Miller’s cows wandered onto his property looking underfed and emaciated. When he went to the spooky home and went inside, he soon found Miller dead on her own bed, and the body of a man named Jacob Shaler on the floor. Miller had been killed with two gunshots to the chest and one to the mouth, whereas Shaler had died of a single gunshot to the side of the head in an apparent suicide. Authorities would conclude that Shaler had killed Miller several days before he had finally killed himself, although it could not be determined what he had been doing during that time. 

Rather spookily, another local man who lived nearby claimed that this had happened there at the house before, indeed in that very same room. The man claimed that 21 years before, another couple had lived there, who had apparently quickly become recluses. No one really knew much about them, and he himself could not even recall their names, but they would soon make waves in the community when they turned up dead of gunshot wounds in the very same room where Miller and her apparent lover had been found, and according to the witness, on the same day. He would say:

“Twenty-two years ago a strange couple moved into the house an cultivated some of the adjoining land. They kept to themselves, did not interfere with anybody's business, and so the neighbors did not learn their names. Twenty-one years ago this very night we came down to this house on the same errand on which we came this morning. not having seen them around for a week or so, and as sure as you stand there, sir, we found that man and woman in this same room, dead-- both with pistol shots in their head. Not having any friends, the county buried them, and no one to this day knows who they were or where they came from. I hardly think that anyone who knows the circumstances would wish to live in this house, and it will be avoided as a terrible spot.”

After all of this death and misfortune, no one dared live in the house again, and indeed most people chose to avoid it altogether, reluctant to even walk past it, with rumors that even looking upon it could drive one to insanity. The rumor was that all of these deaths had been brought about by supernatural forces worming their way into the brains of these people to drive them to do what they had done. Reports of all manner of ghostly activity would be reported from the property over the years, including orbs of light, shadow figures, and the sound of disembodied screams, moans, or even gunshots from within the house. 

Interestingly, the town would face a great decline in later years until it was completely abandoned and was only rediscovered in 1980 during an archeological study. In 2019, the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act designated it the Quindaro Townsite National Commemorative Site, and much of the site was restored to be preserved for educational purposes, but the Miller farmhouse is long gone, taking whatever dark forces that may have lurked there with it. Whatever was going on here it has been lost to history, and we are left to wonder. Was there some dark force hovering around this farm, driving people insane and feeding off of death? Or is this just folklore building upon tragedy? There is no way to know, and it is a curious mystery surrounding a local historical oddity.

In our next case here, in 1836, a successful German-born brickmaker by the name of Balthasar Kreischer made his way to the shores of the United States with his wife and children, arriving in New York City with impeccable timing. A great fire had recently raged through the city, gutting large swaths of it, so Kreischer set up a brickwork factory for manufacturing what were called “fire bricks,” used in the construction of more fire-resistant structures. Considering the tragedy that had ravaged the city, the massive rebuilding going on, and the demand for more fireproof materials, Kreischer made a killing, with a ripple effect from his business creating an economic boom that caused the area to be reverently called “Kreischerville,” which would later be changed to Charleston. Things were not all rosy for Kreischer. He lost a son, Henry, at the age of 6, his wife Caroline died in 1853 in childbirth, giving birth to their seventh child, Edward, and in 1877, his second wife, Mathilda, also died, only made worse when his factory burned down to the ground, although he managed to rebuild. It is perhaps from here that the legacy of this mansion would grow to include dark fates, death, murder, and misfortune that would contribute to it becoming one of the most haunted places in New York.

Kresicher would retire and hand his business over to his sons, Charles and Edward, and build two mansions for them at Charleston, Staten Island, in 1885. At the time, the business was booming again, and things had never been better; however, this seems to be where things started to derail into darkness and tragedy. Just a year after the houses were complete, Kreischer suddenly died in 1886, leaving the business solely to his sons. Shortly after that, the factory was razed yet again by a fire, ironic for a fire brick making facility, and although the sons tried to rebuild, this was the beginning of a downward spiral to doom. They were never able to get the business back to where it had been, their fortunes diminished, and in 1894, Edward took his own life with a gunshot to the head. In later years, Charles’ mansion would burn to the ground during the Great Depression in the 1930s, leaving just one left. 

Abandoned and tainted, with the suicide that had taken place on its grounds hanging over it like a cloud, it went through a quick procession of owners and became a magnet for all sorts of spooky stories. There were lots of rumors, such as that a chef had been murdered in the kitchen and that the Kreischers had often locked their many children in closets as punishment, with at least one said to have died in that state. Paranormal tales were numerous, such as shadowy figures standing at the windows, orbs of light moving about within, the sound of wailing, and even the ghost of Edward ambling about; such reports were common.

One of the only things keeping the decrepit building from being condemned was its being made into a landmark in 1968, after which it would be added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It was at one time in the 90s a restaurant said to be frequented by the mob, but this operation did not last long. In 2000, the property was purchased by a man named Isaac Yomtovian, who renovated it and restored it to somewhat of a shadow of its former glory to be resold, but it was mostly just inhabited by a caretaker by the name of Joseph Young, also known by the nickname “Joe Black.” Little did Yomtovian know that Young was a dishonorably discharged ex-soldier who was heavily connected to the mafia, which would lead to another dark and sinister splotch on a place that was already well-known for being haunted and possibly cursed.

In 2005, a mafia associate named Robert McKelvey apparently owed money to the Bonanno mafia crime family patriarch, Gino Galestro, and was lured to the Kreischer mansion by Young, after which the caretaker strangled and stabbed him, drowning him in a nearby pond for good measure. It would come to light that Young had been doing a bit of side work as a mob hitman for the Bonanno family, and that several associates had helped him to hack apart the body into pieces to be disposed of in the mansion’s basement furnace. Young would be found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 2008, and in the meantime, the ghost of McKelvey has been said to join the roster of spooks said to haunt these halls, and what a roster it is.

Among the ghosts said to dwell at the mansion are those of Edward Freischer, his wife Frieda, the German chef who was rumored to have died there, that of a young boy whose identity is unknown but who is thought to have been one of the Freischer children, and other less definable shadow figures. Common paranormal activity here, other than the sightings of these apparitions, includes slamming doors, rooms locked from the inside only to be unlocked later, flickering lights, and all manner of anomalous noises such as disembodied footsteps, whispers, and screaming, and videotapes made by paranormal investigators have been mysteriously erased. The house has become the site of an annual Halloween haunted house and has appeared on the TV dramas Boardwalk Empire and Gotham, with the crew and actors reporting various strange phenomena, such as moving objects, and freak equipment malfunctions, and the apparition of a little girl, as well as the paranormal investigative shows Paranormal Lockdown and Ghost Hunters. It has gone on to become a very well-known locale in New York, and a prominent murder house that has managed to have paranormal phenomena stick to it. What is going on, and why do these forces swirl around it? We may never know for sure, but considering the death, tragedy, and strife that permeate these walls, it is perhaps not that hard to see why it might be considered haunted.

Next up, we have a perhaps more well-known case of a murder house. In 1886, a man named Henry Howard Holmes came to the city of Chicago, Illinois, and began a humble job working at a corner drugstore owned by Elizabeth S. Holton. And by all accounts, he was an intelligent, hard-working, and very charming man who, before long, had made quick friends with everyone in the area. He also seemed to be moving up in the world, eventually buying the store and becoming the owner. What many people did not know was that the man they knew as H.H. Holmes was not who they thought he was, and that he was to begin a reign of terror that would shock the city, and indeed the nation.

What most people did not know back then was that Holmes had begun life as Herman Webster Mudgett, born in 1861 in New Hampshire. He also had a rather turbulent past, moving from school to school before finally settling at the University of Michigan's Department of Medicine and Surgery, during which time he had worked at a medical lab and began his first steps on the road to a criminal career by using cadavers to defraud insurance companies. Also during his university days, he was married, had a son, and got separated, and after graduating, he began the first of his many jumps around the country, settling in Mooers Forks, New York, where his history would begin to take on a tint of the sinister.

While living in New York, he was suspected of having something to do with the mysterious disappearance of a boy he had last been seen with, and although he was never charged with any crime and denied any wrongdoing, he rather suspiciously moved on to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he took up work as a pharmacist at a drugstore. Here, too, there would be suspicions aimed his way when a young boy overdosed and died from taking medication from the store. Once again, Holmes was not prosecuted, but he once again skipped town right after, this time finding his way to Chicago, where he changed his name and planned to start a new identity.

This is where we come back to Holmes and his new life, where everyone was blissfully unaware of any of his shady past and where he seemed to be successful and well-liked. Yet, it was during this time that he would get up to his old manipulative ways, marrying another woman, Myrta Belknap, while still technically married to his previous wife, although they soon separated as well. Despite this, no one had a clue what he was up to, and he was still ever the charming, successful businessman.

He was so successful, in fact, that in 1887, in the years leading up to the 1893 Chicago World Fair, he bought a lot across the street from the drugstore and began the construction of a massive 3-story building that he planned to turn into a hotel. The construction would prove to be unorthodox to say the least, with Holmes changing architects, contractors, and workers frequently, but this wasn’t quite strange enough to gather any suspicions at the time. When the hotel was completed in 1891, he began hiring employees, and oddly enough, he demanded that they have life insurance and additionally that they make him the beneficiary. Strange, but again not weird enough to arouse any suspicion at the time.

The World Fair would come and go, and unfortunately, the hotel portion of the building seems to have never been opened due to various disputes over payment with the various contractors and architects who had worked on it, but the storefront section on the first floor proved to be a success. Holmes was still up to his ways, marrying yet another woman, Georgiana Yoke, in the meantime, as well as allegedly having numerous mistresses, mostly employees, but there was no reason yet to think that he was anything other than another rich, charming playboy. No one knew that during the World Fair, Holmes had been hard at work completing a string of insurance scams all over the country with an accomplice by the name of Benjamin Pitezel, and there was no particular suspicion raised when he suddenly left Chicago to go off and pull off more scams.

Not all of these schemes were successful, and Holmes once ended up in jail for a scam. On another occasion, he tried to scam an insurance company by faking his own death, only for it to fail when red flags were raised. Not long after this, Holmes kept at his faked death scam, this time turning to his accomplice, Pitezel, and having him fake his own death so that they could collect the insurance money, the same plan he had unsuccessfully tried before with himself. It is unclear just what part of the “faked” of a fake death Holmes didn’t understand, but he ended up making Pitezel just plain dead, after which he collected the money and skipped town. Police wanted Holmes for an outstanding warrant for fraud, but also began to suspect Holmes of foul play when they learned of the scam that he had planned, coupled with Pitezel's disappearance, and they eventually tracked him down in Boston with the help of information provided by a disgruntled former accomplice of Holmes.

He was arrested on November 17, 1894, and this would be the beginning of the end for Holmes, and the start of a show of horrors the likes of which the country had never seen. As they dug deeper into the case, the investigation discovered that not only had Pitezel been murdered in cold blood, but that three of his five children, who had last been seen with Holmes, had also been killed and buried in the cellar of a house Holmes had been renting. Holmes was now a murder suspect, and he was also increasingly linked to more and more mysterious disappearances, namely, several women who had worked at his hotel. However, it was when they began searching his hotel’s premises that the real horror show began.

It was immediately found to be a rather odd and unsettling place, with doors and stairways that led to nowhere, doors that opened onto brick walls or only opened one way, a complicated, labyrinthine floor layout that seemed almost designed to confuse people, and various trap doors, secret doors, peepholes, and anomalous holes that would later be found to have been used to insert hoses for pumping poisonous gas. It was also found that several of the rooms were soundproofed, had been rigged with alarms, and held chutes leading to the basement as well. These baffling and hazy clues would all become very clear and draw sharply into focus when police searched the murky depths of the hotel basement.

One of the first things they discovered down there in those dank depths was a pile of animal and human bones, which would later be shown to have come from children. More macabre discoveries followed, such as other bone fragments, an acid vat presumably for dissolving human remains, chemicals for just that purpose, and a large stove for cremation, found to have a pile of ashes containing a woman’s gold chain, a watch, and some metal buttons. There was also a dissecting table with bloodied women’s clothing lying atop it, as well as various tools for dissection. According to some accounts, it was even claimed that there were various horrific torture devices, like something out of a medieval dungeon, scattered about. For all appearances, this was a veritable murderer’s playground, and police began to suspect what he had been up to.

It was thought that Holmes had rigged the rooms with alarms that sounded in his own room and peepholes so that he could secretly watch guests and keep an eye on their movements, and the secret doors would have allowed him to move about unseen. He could then administer gas into their rooms to knock them out when his victims were least expecting it, after which he would drop them down a chute to the basement, where he would torture them, kill them, chop them up, and then dissolve or burn any remains. He also seemed to have intentionally designed the hotel to be confusing, along with its non-intuitive layout, one-way doors, and stairways to nowhere, to thwart any effort to escape. Although the hotel seems to have never actually opened for business, it was suspected that he still had some guests from time to time, and that he had numerous mistresses stay here as well, although how many he may have killed in this death trap was unknown.

In the end, for all of this there were found no full human bodies were found, and the bones could have come from anywhere. After all, Holmes had worked with cadavers before, so they may have been from people who were already deceased. Despite all of the gruesome and disturbing evidence on hand, there was nothing concrete to prove that Holmes had actually murdered anyone there, and so he was not charged with anything concerning the hotel, which was now widely becoming known as the “Murder Castle” by sensationalized news reports. Additionally, Holmes insisted that he was innocent and had done nothing wrong.

Eventually, after a very highly publicized and bizarre trial, Holmes would only officially be found guilty of the murder of Benjamin Pitezel, but he was highly implicated in the murder of Pitezel’s children as well. In the wake of his murder conviction, Holmes underwent a sinister change, going from proclaiming his innocence to a full confession of having carried out 27 additional murders, as well as 6 attempted murders. He also began to make claims that he was under the influence of Satanic forces and that he was at times even fully possessed by the Devil. One of his most famous quotes while incarcerated was:

“I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. I was born with the 'Evil One' standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.”

All of this added to the macabre allure of the case, which was splashed everywhere in the news, drawing intense interest from all over. These sensational news stories were often exaggerated, adding grim details or inflating the death toll, with some pulp tabloid-style newspapers claiming that the monstrous Holmes had slaughtered up to 200 people, but no matter what the real number was, he was only convicted of one murder, the murder of Pitezel. For this murder, he would be sentenced to death and executed by hanging on May 7, 1896, in a spectacle that included a botched execution that led to Holmes dangling about on the rope for 20 minutes before finally dying and ending his reign of terror. Oddly, Holmes had requested that his body be encased in a huge slab of concrete to prevent grave robbers from stealing it, and this was done in accordance with his wishes.

In the aftermath of Holmes’ death, there began a string of mysterious accidents and deaths involving people and places who had been associated with him or who had helped put him behind bars. The first strange incident occurred not long after Holmes was dead, when a coroner who had testified against him suddenly developed serious blood poisoning for no reason and died. Next was a mysterious explosion and fire that completely razed the hotel to the ground in 1895. After this, other deaths followed in quick succession, including another coroner and the judge who had sentenced Holmes to death, who both fell with mysterious illnesses, as well as the prison warden, from suicide. Then there were the deaths of the father of one of Holmes’ alleged victims, a priest who had read him his last rites, and a jury foreman from the trial, who died in a freak accident when electrical wires fell on him. All of this quickly convinced people that Holmes had left some dark curse behind.

The curse continued when one of the offices of the insurance company that had foiled his fake death plot burned to the ground. There were also more strange deaths in later years. The man who had pointed authorities in Holmes’ direction, who had been pardoned for providing the information, was shot and killed in a violent shootout with police in Chicago in 1909. Then there was the suicide of the former caretaker of the hotel, who killed himself in 1914 after claiming that he had been haunted by constant, strange hallucinations. One of the detectives who helped track Holmes down also fell seriously ill, although he survived. Whether any of this had anything to do with a supernatural curse or not is unknown, but it is all very creepy nevertheless.

Other strange mysteries hover about Holmes and his Murder Castle as well. Although the building was destroyed in a fire, people claimed that at night, there could be heard ghostly screams and moans coming from the charred plot, and that shadowy figures could be seen stalking about in the darkness. Animals were also said to avoid it like the plague, with dogs refusing to go anywhere near it. Even when a post office was built there in 1938, the hauntings didn’t stop, and the building is said to be incredibly haunted. Postal workers have described all manner of paranormal phenomena occurring here, such as anomalous noises, moving objects, roving cold spots, shadowy apparitions, and even the ghost of Holmes himself, and this is all experienced the most in the basement, which is a surviving remnant of the original hotel.

Besides the “curse” and hauntings, there have also been conspiracy theories associated with the story of Holmes. It was long believed that he had never even died at all, and that the body they buried that day was not his, his final masterpiece of a scam. This conspiracy was so rampant and pervasive that in 2017, his grave was actually exhumed to see if there was any truth to it. Within the immense 2-ton chunk of concrete, the remains and even his clothes were found to be remarkably intact and well-preserved, and the body would be conclusively identified as that of Holmes, ending the conspiracy theory.

With the dark and sinister infusing it all, it is understandable why the grotesque story has gained so much attention and has produced so many spooky accounts. The colorful, morbid tale of Henry Howard Holmes has achieved an almost legendary status, but is also so peppered with exaggerations and unknowns that it is hard to know sometimes where the truth of the man ends, and the myth begins. Very little is known of the man himself, and even his deeds have been played up for maximum creepiness. We don’t even know how many people he really killed. With all of the stories of hauntings and curses, it all gets even further pushed into the murky realm of strange mysteries and the unknown, where it is hard to really know what to make of any of it. Nevertheless, it is certainly a breathtaking tale of horror and serial killers from a time when that wasn’t even a common phrase in America, and it will remain indelibly imprinted upon history as a glimpse into pure evil.

Continuing our tour, in 2001, the Bernal family moved into a pleasant little home in Canoga Park, California, thinking that it was more or less their dream home. At first, things were great, but there would turn out to be something rather off about the place. It began with simply a strange, creeping sense of foreboding, and that of eyes watching when no one was there. Although this could have been written off as a trick of the imagination, the feeling of some dark presence was often almost unbearably stifling, and everyone in the household would profoundly feel it. Before long, other strange things began happening, such as lights flicking on or off and moving objects, and the family’s daughter, Gaby Bernal, would later explain:

"The house had a bad energy when we moved in. Weird things would happen. The garage door would open and close, I had like cold spots in my room. I didn’t really sleep at all. I felt like someone was watching me. Stuff like that makes it very real and scary and very unsettling."

Gaby would start talking with an imaginary friend she called “Joseph,” who she felt following her around and who she would talk to, which when coupled with all of the other strange things going on unsettled her parents. Gaby would claim that Joseph would sometimes move things or open and close the garage door, as well as turn lights on and off. It was all completely baffling for the family until the father, Guy Bernal learned from a neighbor that there was something in the home’s past that the realtors had failed to mention and which they had been unaware. It seems as if this house was the location of a rather violent and high-profile crime that would put a new spin on everything.

It would turn out that the house was where a prolific child actress by the name of Judith Eva Barsi had once lived in the 1980s. Barsi was in countless TV commercials and television shows, as well as appearing in Jaws: The Revenge, and lending her voice to the films The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go to Heaven. Barsi was a popular pick for directors looking for actresses to play someone younger, as she was very short for her age and so was often cast in the roles of younger children. She was all over the place at the time, pulling in an estimated $100,000 a year. Yet while it all seemed that they were living the life, there were dark horizons ahead.

Eza’s father, Hungarian immigrant József Barsi, had a bit of a drinking problem. He would routinely get completely stupid drunk and fly into depressive rages in which he would threaten to kill himself, and also direct physical violence towards his family. He would make abusive threats, such as that he was going to kill them all or burn down the house, and would continue his physical assaults. It all took a toll on little Eva, who was eventually taken to a child psychologist, where it was found that she was suffering extreme physical and emotional abuse, and the Child Protective Services stepped in, only to be turned away by the mother, who claimed that divorce proceedings were underway. On July 28, 1988, the bodies of József Barsi, his wife, Maria Virovacz, and Eva were found dead in their house in an apparent alcohol-fueled murder suicide, each of them shot once in the head. József had apparently killed them and then sat with their dead bodies for two days before attempting to burn them and the house down and kill himself.

This was all certainly an eye-opening revelation for the Bernal’s, who had had no idea about any of this, and it seemed to explain a lot, such as the paranormal phenomena, and even Gaby’s shadowy invisible friend was called “Joseph,” which sounds an awful lot like “József,” even though she had not known about the tragedy at the time she was spending time with her imaginary friend. The idea then became that Eva and her father were still tied to this place, perhaps imprisoned and tethered there by the trauma and anger involved with the murders. Unfortunately, the whole story would only really come to the attention of the public through the most vulgar of means: reality TV.

It seems that there is actually a reality show that focuses on renovating so-called “murder houses,” to liven them up, get rid of the bad energy, and straighten up their Feng Shui, one would presume. This show is called Murder House Flip, available on the streaming service Quibi, and yes, it is perhaps unfortunately, a real thing. On the show, designers, paranormal experts, and other pros will appraise a location that has a haunted, dark past and go about sprucing it up, and in this case, the task fell to interior designers Joelle Uzyel and Mikel Welch. Over three entire episodes, they went about repainting the hallways, installing recessed lighting, rearranging Gaby’s room, which was where the murders had actually taken place, and adding French doors that open to a renovated backyard, all of which ended up reportedly somewhat airing out the ominous energy that once lurked here. Gaby Bernal herself would say on the program after the make-over:

“I felt bad energy here and now it feels like it’s dissipated. The negative energy that we felt in the house is gone already. No more sadness, no more crying. It is going to be one of the greatest things that has happened in my life.”

Besides the mystery of why anyone would think that renovating haunted murder houses would make a good and tasteful TV show,  we are also left with the conundrum of what is really going on here. The Bernal family was experiencing this weirdness before they even knew of its troubled past, and they have always insisted it was all true, no matter the sensationalism attached to it afterwards. What exactly was going on here? Did the dark history of this place manage to seep into its very being? Were there restless spirits tied to it in their anguish and pain? Or is it nothing more than an urban legend? Whatever the case may be, such places draw reports such as these to them, and in the end, we can only wonder at what it all means.

After looking at cases like these, what do you think? Can places be evil? Can they be imbued with the atrocities of their pasts to make them haunted or cursed places? There is the idea in the world of the paranormal that locations can absorb certain energies of what happens within them, so if that is true, can these negative energies stain these places somehow? Whatever the case may be, these don’t seem to be the kinds of places anyone would want to wander around at night.