Strange and Dreadful Things

Henry Kuehl was just trying to do his job. On a warm January night, he rode out to a rural Iowa farm to help settle a dispute between the farmer and his landlord. The night started off normal enough, but soon degeneratedinto an evening that Kuehl would never forget.

Sam Smith was a desperate man. He couldn't find a job, and he had a family to feed. Out of desperation he turned to stealing. But when he died suddenly, did his ghost return to watch over his family?

Imagine driving near Chicago's Mount Carmel Cemetery and seeing a woman wearing a white wedding dress walking along the road. It's rainy and muddy, and yet she seems untouched by all of it. You would be seeing the Italian Bride, one of Chicago's most famous ghosts. But who was she, and why does her ghost still haunt the area?

William Nelson was a private pilot who had just married the beautiful Onaima Nelson, a woman 23 years younger than himself. Then, just after Thanksgiving 1991, he disapeared. He was found in early December, murdered and dismembered by his new bride. But had she killed him out of self-defense, or had she murdered him in cold blood?

In late 1990, the body of Mary Lou Pratt was found in a quiet Dallas, Texas neighborhood. She had been severely beaten and then shot to death. If that wasn't bad enough, it was soon discovered that her killer had expertly removed both her eyes. Mary Lou had just become the unwitting victim of one of the strangest and brutal serial killers in Texas history.

Every Halloween, every village, town, and city dredge up their favorite spooky stories. Where I live is no different. Come and hear some of the legends and stories that I grew up with as I tell you about cursed statues, wailing spirits, and haunted houses.

When Johann Whynack married his Marie, he hoped that they would spend the rest of their lives happily ever after. But Marie loved another man, and saw no reason to stop seeing him even after she was married. As the marriage continued, the love triangle quickly took a toll on their lives as it spiraled into physical abuse and murder.

In 1965, two police officers knocked on the door of a small house in Houston, Texas. They were there to check on Fred and Edwina Rogers, an elderly couple who hadn't contacted their family for a week. Going inside the house, they found no one. On an impulse, they opened the refriderator and discovered one of the most gruesome crimes to ever occur in Texas history.

In 1996, Bobie and Marilyn Blewer, professional food vendors from Missouri, set up their trailer at the Iowa State Fair. It was - and is - one of the biggest fairs in the country, and had been a regular stop for the Blewers for twenty years. Then, one sunny afternoon, as thousands of people enjoyed the rides and entertainment, word began travelling amongst the other vendors that something had happ...

When it was built in 1903, the Claypool Hotel was designed to be the best and brightest of Indianapolis' hotels. And, for forty years, it was. Then, starting in 1943, a serious of tragic events that included two murders and a fire led to the Claypool's dramatic destruction in the 1960's. But does something of the grand old hotel still linger on the site it formerly occupied in downtown Indianapoli...

In 1954, two maids found a horrible odor coming from a dresser in one of the rooms at the Claypool Hotel. When the dresser was searched, hotel staff found the badly decomposed body of a woman in the bottom drawer. Her name was Dorothy Poore, an 18-year-old trying to build a future in Indianapolis. What had happened to her, and who had put her body in the drawer?

Maoma Ridings had joined the United States Army during World War II to aid the war effort. A professional nurse turned physiotherapist; she was a young woman who enjoyed a good time. On August 30, 1943, she was found murdered in an Indianapolis hotel room. Who had ended the life of the well-liked nurse from Georgia?

In 1990, a highway patrolman in Arizona stopped to check on a semi pulled off to the side of the road. Inside he found a woman who was naked, handcuffed, and wearing a horse bridle. While the driver, Robert Ben Rhodes, said that everything was consensual. The patrolman suspected otherwise. The investigation would turn into a nationwide investigation leading to one of the most evil killers to ever...

In January of 1926, Ed Rinebold was driving his normal newspaper deliver route in western Illinois when he had a strange feeling. The car at the railroad crossing had just been in an accident. He hadn’t heard or seen anything, but just knew that’s what happened. When he went back, the flaming ruins of the car and the bodies on the ground told him he was right. What had happened, and how did Ed kno...

On the night of October 9, 1896, the town of Corning, Iowa was awakened by an alarm bell. A fire had broken out near the railroad tracks on the south side of town. As firemen and citizens fought the blaze, little did they know that an even bigger disaster was about to happen right behind them.

No one had seen Percy Smith since he had gone to buy cattle from a man near Council Bluffs, Iowa. When police were called, their search led to Corliss Bruntlett, a man with a hidden past. They soon discovered that he was concealing an even darker secret that would shock their community.

Christine Leidel thought the fortune teller seemed nice enough, but you couldn’t be too careful in 1808 Bavaria. When he offered to look into her future, she decided to trust him. Christine Leidel had just made an appointment with one of the most infamous murderers in European history.

In 2007, a woman contacted the press with a startling revelation: her father, Donald Studey, was a serial killer responsible for the deaths of as many as 70 young women at his home in Green Hollow, Iowa. As the story began to make headlines across the nation, the case began to make many twists and turns that made people question what was true and what wasn't.

Swede and Fay Lewis had always been a stormy one, and Fay was finally tired of it. When she finally decided to end it and filed for divorce, Swede was enraged. To what depths would he descend when he didn’t get his way?

In this, the second part of the tragic story of the St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital Fire of 1950, people across America were shocked by the disaster that had claimed the lives of 41 people. Fire and police investigators were eager to find out what had caused the blaze. When they did, the truth was almost too shocking and bizarre to believe.

in the early hours of January 7, 1950, flames illuminated the night sky around Mercy Hosptial. An orderly was one of the first to see a mental hospital on the grounds engulfed in fire, but he would be far from the last. By the next morning, it would become one of the worst hospital fires in United States History.

Earl Albert Nead was born on November 13, 1937. By Christmas Day, he was dead, the victim of a horrible accident. But as police looked into things, the more it appeared that Earl’s death was deliberate. What had happened in that small Wisconsin apartment that Christmas?

While the Industrial Revolution set the stage for the technological marvels that we enjoy today, early industry did not come without it's dangers. Children commonly worked in factories then, and they often paid a heavy price, sacrificing their health and even their limbs. But some, like Frank Nead, would make the ultimate sacrifice.  

Jesse Stanbridge was just another railroad cop doing his job in 1909 when he had an argument with a local farmer. That disagreement set into motion a chain of events that would change both their lives forever.

Mary Stewart had died too young, and her husband, William, couldn't stand the grief. Buying a gun, he set into motion plans of murder and suicide. But after telling a neighbor, nothing went the way he expected, resulting in an unbelievable conclusion.