Pennsylvania Oddities

Near Falls Creek in Jefferson County is a region known as Beechwoods, a locality which includes some of the finest farmland in Washington  Township. The area was settled in 1824 by Henry Keys, Alexander Osborn,  John McIntosh, John McGhee and Thomas Moore. These early settlers,  mostly of Scotch and Irish origin, named the community after the large  number of beech trees they f...

The mysterious 1914 kidnapping of seven-year-old Warren McCarrick created a media sensation and culminated in the finding of a boy's body in the Delaware River. While the boy's abductor has never been caught, it's possible that Warren might have been one of numerous child victims tortured and killed by a monstrous degenerate.

A baseball executive, a sex-crazed playboy, and a wealthy doctor all suffer strange fates courtesy of the "evil eye".

Ask any resident of Exeter Township, and they'll tell you the most famous haunted house in the area is the Lizzie Lincoln house-- an abandoned 19th century structure that beckons spook-seekers from behind a rusting fence festooned with "No Trespassing" signs. The legend of Lizzie Lincoln is so famous around Berks County that it has found a home in numerous books about Pennsylvania ghost stories. H...

When a small child was found hungry and crying inside an abandoned automobile parked along a rural stretch of Lycoming County in the summer of 1922, the first chapter of a perplexing mystery was written. When the bodies of a man and woman, their throats slashed as if by a razor, were found a few feet away in the waters of Lycoming Creek, the mystery deepened, and to this day no one knows if Henry...

In 1909, an old hermit named David Cutschall died at the home of his brother-in-law in a sparsely-populated spot in Franklin County known as "The Corner". On his deathbed, Cutshall made a series of strange comments that left many scratching their heads, including a possible confession regarding the mysterious disappearance of an eight-year-old girl who vanished in the mountains below Mercersburg i...

Perhaps the most famous haunted location in Erie County is the site of the old Gudgeonville Covered Bridge, which spanned Elk Creek for over a century near a gorge known as the Devil's Backbone. With rumors of paranormal activity stretching back to the early 20th century-- and a verifiable track record of bizarre deaths-- it is no surprise that Gudgeonville has become a favorite spot for ghosthunt...

Just outside of Lewistown in Mifflin County is a picturesque little valley of patchwork farms and ancient barns. Known as Ort's Valley, this was the home of Henry Ort who, in 1903, bequeathed the cemetery on his farm to be held in trust for future burials of his descendants. Perhaps then it is no surprise that, shortly before his death in 1907, Henry Ort experienced a supernatural event that not o...

In 1903, the residents of York were terrorized by the appearance of a woman in a long black veil who strolled through Penn Park every night, imploring frightened passersby to lift her veil and take a peek. As if this nightly occurrence wasn't bizarre enough, it just so happened that Penn Park was once the site of a potter's field where York's impoverished and unknown dead had been buried in unmark...

Thousands of meteors streaked across the Pennsylvania sky for several weeks in October of 1907, with meteorites crashing into Schuylkill, Dauphin, Northumberland and surrounding counties by the hundreds. Across the mid-state, enormous chunks of red-hot space rock set forests ablaze while farmers and livestock alike huddled in barns and basements, fearful of their lives. From Wilkes-Barre to York,...

It was a Wednesday morning in May of 1939 when neighbors of the Cook family made a startling discovery-- a bloody axe lying upon the ground. Being a farming community not far from the Ohio state line, blades and bloody implements weren't terribly uncommon in South Beaver Township; the necessities of daily life often required the butchering of a chicken or the slaughtering of a pig. But there was i...

Constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1961, Kettle Creek  Reservoir in Clinton County is a popular destination for fishermen,  boaters and swimmers. Yet, beneath its peaceful waters rests the bones of long-forgotten early settlers of Leidy Township.

Just about everyone in Pennsylvania knows about the ghost town of Centralia, and most folks who were born and raised in the area, such as myself, have spent many a summer day exploring the post-Apocalyptic terrain, marveling at the smoke billowing from cracks in the abandoned streets, and pondering the fire that has been burning underground for generations. However, very few locals remember Centra...

When one thinks of murder scenes, the mind naturally gravitates towards secluded wilderness spots, dark basements, bar rooms and back alleys. The actors in these grisly crimes, if justice is lucky, are arrested and locked up until such time as they are called upon by the  criminal justice system to face the consequences of their sinister deeds in a courtroom. We tend to view courtrooms as imp...

The story of the rise and fall of Frank Lee Wilson is a remarkable tale; it is the tragic story of a quiet, tiny man tasked with the awesome responsibility of meting out justice to the state's most hardened and repugnant criminals. And it is a cautionary tale about how a mild-mannered individual can turn into a cruel, hardened shell of a human being in just a few short years after being granted th...

When John Wentzel discovered a human skeleton buried in the basement of his Federal Street home in Lebanon in 1926, it set into motion a bizarre chain of events that whipped the entire city into a frenzy. It is a  story of a chilling nightmare-- following by a gruesome find-- that still puzzles fans of paranormal unsolved mysteries to this day.

Built in 1894, the seven-story Hotel Jermyn has been a Scranton landmark for over a century. Named after coal baron John Jermyn, the 200-room hotel has seen scores of famous and infamous guests alike, from President Eisenhower to mafia hitmen, and has boasted a bevy of locally-famous bars and nightclubs such as the Omar Room, which opened in 1935 and showcased renowned performers of the era like P...

Located about seventy-five miles northeast of Pittsburgh, Reynoldsville is a small, quiet town which hasn't seen much excitement since the 1920s, when a handful of factories and silk mills attracted workers to the tiny borough. In the summer of 1928, Frank Chiffin was employed at the silk mill as a watchman. The close proximity between the mill and his home allowed him to keep tabs on his family....

Located near the center of the Lock Haven University campus, Woolridge Hall is home to over two hundred college students. While scores of students have passed though the doors of this modern building since its construction in 1962, many would be surprised to learn that this spot was once the location of "Hillside"-- the sprawling estate of state senator Samuel Richard Peale and his wife, Harr...

The story of Solomon "Bip" Vawn is well known throughout Pennsylvania. It is a classic tale of a runaway slave who, despite unbelievable odds, finds freedom north of the Mason-Dixon Line and lives out the remainder of his days in peace and prosperity. There are many different versions of the story; in some accounts, Bip dies at a ripe old age and is buried on his farm in Mont Alto in Franklin Coun...

One of Montgomery County's most perplexing unsolved mysteries is the 1932 death of Samuel Forti, whose battered body was found hanging in the washroom of the Werner Foundry in Lansdale, where he worked as a night watchman. At various times, authorities believed that Forti's death was the result of suicide, an attack by a burglar, revenge by a jealous lover, and-- perhaps strangest of all-- a shado...

A decade ago, the law enforcement community of Chester County wanted to pay tribute to a sheriff who was killed on his second day on the job in 1887. They chose to memorialize the long-forgotten sheriff, Benjamin Irey, with an 18-by-15-inch bronze plaque at the courthouse in West Chester. Usually, such ceremonies involve descendants of the fallen hero's family. But in the case of Benjamin Irey, co...

The Moosic Mountains of Lackawanna County are just a stone's throw away from the urban centers of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, yet they still contain dark, shadowy, seemingly impenetrable places steeped in mystery dating back to Indian times. However, one of the most fascinating mysteries doesn't date back to the early settler days, but to the early 20th century, when the coal mining industry reigne...

In the early hours of September 10, 1896, the sleepy town of Bloomsburg became the center of one of the most diabolical murder plots ever concocted by the human mind. Poison, dynamite and deadly microbes-- these were the tools used by Clifton Knorr, a disgruntled son  of a wealthy businessman hired by prominent local lawyer Lloyd S. Wintersteen to eliminate his chief rival.

With its fieldstone construction reminiscent of a Medieval fortress, the William Penn Memorial Fire Tower is a Reading landmark that turns about as many heads as its Mt. Penn neighbor, the Pagoda. While both structures are unofficial historic symbols of Berks County's largest  city, the fire tower has a particularly strange history-- a history marked by irony, tragedy and perhaps even an Indi...