Urban Legends Part 2

In a small town in Texas, a mother was worried when her not-too-bright son failed to return from work. She told the police, who organised a search party that combed the surrounding area, but they couldn't find any trace of him. Two days later the young man turned up looking the worse for wear and talking about being abducted by aliens. He told interested reporters that he had been walking back home from work when he had met the aliens, who had taken him back to a brightly-coloured room with strange, loud music playing. He went on to describe how the aliens had forced him to eat food which burnt the back of his throat and to drink a foul-tasting liquid before he blacked out. He remembers nothing after that until he woke up in a field with a splitting headache and made his way home. One sceptical reporter, investigating the details that the man had given him, discovered a little bar full of Mexicans near the field where the man had woken up and he realised what had happened. The Mexicans had taken the man in and plied him with hot spicy food and tequila. The man had got drunk and passed out and, on relating the story, he used the US immigration term of "alien" to apply to the Mexicans.

The Legend:

A couple checks into a hotel and have to put up with a foul odor in their room all night. They call the staff to complain and somebody figures out the stench is coming from the bed.

The staff take off the matress and discover the couple has been sleeping over the rotting body of a dead girl who had been stuffed in the box spring.

The Truth:

This actually happened, in Las Vegas. Also, Kansas City, MO and Atlantic City, NJ and several times in Florida and California and, well, let's just say that in or under the bed in a hotel room seems to be a fairly popular destination for the recently deceased.

It makes sense if you think about it. The closet and under the bed are the two most popular places to hide just about anything, so it's not surprising a hell of a lot of corpses end up there as well. In fact, the odds are pretty good that at least once a guy has killed a prostitute, tried to stuff her under the bed, only to find there was already a body there.

A prop at a carnival was discovered not to be made of the usual combination of papier mache and carni spit, but human skin and bone. All the little kiddies at the haunted house had been poking and giggling at a real, mummified dead body.

Apparently the smell wasn’t just coming from the convict manning the corndog stand. Back in 1976, a camera crew filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man began to set up in the haunted house at the Nu-Pike Amusement Park in Long Beach, Calif.

As they were moving aside a "hanging man" prop, they accidentally knocked off its arm and discovered human bones inside.

The story gets stranger. The body was actually that of criminal mastermind Elmer McCurdy, who was killed in a shootout after robbing a train in 1911. The princely sum old Elmer got killed for? $46 (and two jugs of whiskey).

McCurdy was embalmed by the local undertaker, and apparently the guy was so darn pleased with his work that he propped up the corpse in the funeral home as evidence of his skills. People were charged 5 cents to see the corpse, which they paid by dropping a nickel in the cadaver’s mouth. Remember that little bit of history the next time somebody turns their nose up at you for liking Hostel 2.

 After several years of raking in the nickels (how exactly these coins were retrieved after being dropped into the corpse’s mouth is something probably best left to the imagination) our enterprising undertaker’s scheme was ruined when McCurdy's brothers showed up to claim him. Of course, these guys weren’t his brothers at all, but wily carnival promoters. From that point on, McCurdy’s mummy went on a morbid mystery tour all around America, popping up at carnivals all over the country before finally coming to rest in Long Beach.

Scratch marks are later found on the coffin lid of the deseased along with other desperate signs of escape.

This not only happened, but back in the day it happened with alarming regularity. In the late 19th century, William Tebb tried to compile all the instances of premature burial from medical sources of the day. He managed to collect 219 cases of near-premature burial, 149 cases of actual premature burial and a dozen cases where dissection or embalming had begun on a not-yet-deceased body.

Now, this may seem ridiculous, but keep in mind this was an era before doctors such as the esteemed Dr. Gregory House gained the ability to solve any ailment within 42 minutes. If you went to the doctor with the flu in those days, he’d likely cover you in leeches and prescribe you heroin to suppress your cough. Their only method for determining if a person had died was to lean over their face and scream "WAKE UP" over and over again. If you didn't react, they buried you.

The concern over being buried alive back then was so real that the must-have hot-ticket item for the wealthy and paranoid were "safety coffins" that allowed those inside to signal to the outside world (usually by ringing a bell or raising some type of flag) should they awake 6-feet under.

Near the community of Spring Lake, an old house is rumored to have claimed the lives of the people who have lived there. On three different occassions, three different men met odd ends. Nobody knows why these men were driven to early graves, but everyone knows that the circumstances surrounding their deaths are far beyond the realm of the normal. Construction on the house began in 1910, and the strange occurrences first plagued the house as it was being built. The first contractor mysteriously disappeared. Finally, a second contractor was hired and the job was finished. The owner rented the building to a tenant, but the house was not his home for long. Less than six months after he moved in, the tenant hanged himself from a rafter in attic for unknown reasons.

After the unexplained suicide, the house stood empty for a while. When a few months had passed, a family from Virginia came to settle in North Carolina and bought the house, not knowing of the gruesome event that had occured on the top floor. Six weeks later, the man of the family hanged himself in the attic on the very same rafter where the first owner had met his untimely death.

Now the site of two grisly suicides, the house became a completely undesirable location. It stood vacant for many years, making it suspectible to the ravages of age and environment. The dark, weather-beaten facade was an ominous sight, and no one would live there. In desperation, the owner finally offered the house rent-free to anyone with the nerve to live in it and keep it repair. A Fort Bragg soldier from Boston took the owner up on his offer.

The soldier and his wife moved in and tried their best to make the creepy old house into a suitable living area. However, the plague was not over. Strange happenings disturbed the house and its owners. Alarm clocks rang inexplicably at the wrong hour in the middle of the night. Closed books opened up on their own, and locked doors unlocked themselves.

When news of the house's many curiosities spread throughout town, visitors began showing up at the house. Sometimes, more than 40 people per day would knock on the doors and inquire about the supernatural phenomena. Finally, the dubious publicity struck the young soldier's last nerve. One day, his wife found him dead, hanging from a rafter in the attic-a rafter that was worn with a smooth groove where two other ropes had been looped before.

On a dark and solemn night in the tiny community of Vander, railroad switchman Archer Matthews was alone at the train station. While he awaited the next train to pass by the depot, he lit his lantern and stepped outside onto the platform to smoke a cigarette. A misty rain began to fall. In the distance, an unexplained noise pierced the darkness. Startled, Matthews leaned over the edge of the platform to investigate the source of the sound, but he lost his balance and fell onto the tracks below, knocking him unconscious.

Finally, the lonesome, crying whistle from the incoming train sounded. As the train barrelled toward the station, the conductor saw no one waiting to board at the Vander station. He did, however, see a faint glimmer on the horizon. When the conductor finally realized that the glimmer belonged to a lantern, he caught a glimpse of Matthews' body sprawled across the tracks. The conductor slammed on his brakes, but it was too late. Matthews was killed instantly.

Now, one can allegedly see a flickering light above the train tracks where Vander Station used to stand. The light floatover the tracks for a few seconds and then disappears. Watch your back, though. Eyewitnesses have claimed that if you get too close to the light, it will indeed disappear...only to reappear a few seconds later behind you.

Legend has it that the flicker is the flame from the old switchman's lantern, swinging back and forth from Matthews' ghostly hand. Naysayers may claim that the light is merely phosphorescent swamp gas, known as will o' the wisp. In marshy areas, such as the area where the Vander station was, natural gas is known to escape from the ground and glow as it rises. Skeptics might believe this story, but anyone who has actually seen the Vander Light holds firm to the idea that the light indicates the spirit of Archer Matthews, still waiting on the train that never comes and searching for the sound that literally scared him to death.

Now the home of the Women's Club of Fayetteville, the Sanford House on Dick St. is rumored to also be the home of a ghostly presence. Eyewitnesses have seen the spectre of a woman in black. The spirit has been known to slowly descend the staircase and then forlornly ascend to the landing and disappear. Who is this phantom lady? There are a couple of possibilties.

The most popular tale tells of a young woman searching for her lost love. As the story goes, a Civil War soldier was killed in the Sanford House and buried in the basement-possibly in the old vault that was used when the house served as a bank in the 1820's. The soldier's sweetheart searched the house for him, not knowing that she would never see him alive again. Devastated by her loss, the young woman mourned for the solider until her own death-a death which some say occurred as a result of her broken heart. Now she haunts the stairs of the house, still searching for her love for all of eternity.

Other stories claim that the spirit may be Margaret Halliday, the daughter of a prominent Fayetteville family and the wife of banker John Cameron. Cameron, who was the cashier of the Bank of Fayetteville, lived on the second floor of the house when it served as the bank's headquarters. Upon his marriage, Cameron bought the house and the family lived there for several years. Incidentally, the Oval Ballroom, which stands next door to the Sanford House, was supposedly built for the Halliday-Cameron wedding.

Speaking of the Oval Ballroom, the ornate and oddly-shaped structure has some secrets that lie within its walls. Its story centers around Ann K. Simpson. Her 1850 murder trial was the "trial of the century" in her time-a captivating and controversial tale for a captivating and controversial woman.

On the night of November 8, 1849 Ann's husband Alexander, a wealthy carriage shop owner, died suddenly. Autopsy results revealed that Alexander had been poisoned with arsenic. The only suspect was his wife. A warrant was issued for Anne's arrest, and she was extradited from Havana, Cuba where she had fled to shortly after Alexander's demise.

Anne was the first woman ever tried for murder in Cumberland County and possibly in the state of North Carolina. The testimony presented at her trial was truly sensational: letters alluding to infidelity and Ann's visit to fortune-teller Polly Rising, who predicted that Alexander would be dead within a week. Then, there was the most damning evidence of all. An employee from Samuel J. Hinsdale's drugstore testified that Ann had purchased an ounce of arsenic, supposedly to kill rats, soon before Alexander's death. The prosecution claimed that Ann had used the rat poison to taint her husband's coffee at dinner in the Oval Ballroom on the fateful night.

In his closing statement, defense lawyer D. K. MacRae said, "You cannot give her peace. You cannot restore her joy. But gentlemen, you can let her live." The jury deliberated for three hours and returned with a not guilty verdict.

Did Ann really poison her husband and fool the jury into believing that she was innocent? Or was she the victim of an unusual coincidence? She took the truth to her grave. Only she (and perhaps Alexander) knew whether she had gotten away with murder.

The Kyle House, the grand Greek Revival Style house on Green Street, might be home to a restless spirit of its own. Several witnesses have claimed to hear strange disembodied noises in the house, such as furniture moving on its own or footsteps on an otherwise empty staircase. When one enters the Kyle House, there is definitely a strange vibe radiating from its elegant walls. Maybe its visitors are being watched.

The house belonged to family patriarch James Kyle, a merchant and prominent city figure who immigrated to Fayetteville from Scotland. He built the beautiful dwelling around 1855 after his first home was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1831. After Kyle's death, his daughter Annie lived in the house. Annie was a nurse during the Civil War era. She eventually rented the house to borders, and for a while, the Kyle House served as city offices.

The strange atmosphere in the house is most often attributed to the presence of the spirit of old James Kyle. Is he still roaming the hallways, still taking care of his home from beyond the grave? Visit the Kyle House and listen up. Maybe you'll hear him yourself.