Strange and Dreadful Things

Courthouses were a big boost for the economies of frontier towns, and they were willing to do nearly anything to get them. When a long-running courthouse feud started again in Clinton County, Iowa, in the mid-1800’s, a group of local citizens decided to not take these insults lying down.

John David owed Arvid Helloian a debt. Arvid was content to wait to be paid back, until a family crisis back in Armenia forced him to ask for immediate repayment. When John David refused, Helloian snapped, leading to one of the most shocking crimes of 1921.

When Olive Funk was killed, nearly everyone saw it happen. While shocking, it would reveal a series of tangled secrets and lies buried beneath the idyllic façade of a small Iowa town.

In 1906, everyone loved Grace Reed. Everyone wanted to be her friend. But one man wanted her too much, and his obsession would drive him to make sure that no one else would ever have her, either.

In 1940, a burning car in rural South Dakota held a terrible secret. One man would serve as a connection between it and one of the worst mass murders in Iowa history.

Guy Gilbert returned to his South Dakota home to find that his visiting son had committed suicide. When the police went to notify his family of his untimely death, they had no idea of the horrors that awaited them inside their quiet house in Iowa.

Mary Schultz was a young, well-educated 20-year-old with her whole life ahead of her. When she married Henry Schultz, she thought that her future would be even brighter. Mary was wrong.

Another collection of short tales from Midwest history, Volume 3 deals with accidents too awful to contemplate, yet too horrible to forget.

Shortly before Christmas 1946, 35-year-old Bessie Moore trip to bake cookies with a friend ended in tragedy. The events of that December day still echo 75-years later.

Heartrending events in the life of Margaretha Nehlsen had brought her to the very depths of despair. No one knew that she was about to cause an even more horrific tragedy.

Mary Schlais was murdered on a cold February morning in 1974, just as a man named Randy was making his way to Wisconsin. Was this soft-spoken monster responsible for her death?

Mary Schlais was a beautiful young artist with her entire life ahead of her. A veteran hitchhiker, one bad ride in 1974 changed her life forever.

Steamboats are an iconic part of the history of the Mississippi River. In the case of the steamboat Lansing, however, that history turned both tragic and terrifying in a split second.

The Death Curve of Cambridge, Illinois, will forever be linked to the story of a woman who committed a horrible crime nearby. What really happened there, and does her ghost still haunt the area?

Horace and Geneva's marriage began to fall apart for all the usual reasons: money, jealousy, and neglect. Their path to reconciliation would quickly take a dark turn through rage and madness, speeding toward a terrible conclusion in the summer of 1920.

Stories of the American West have captivated generations of people. But beyond the tales of cowboy shootouts and outlaw exploits lies the bizarre story of Big Nose George, a notorious outlaw whose name became linked to a very special pair of shoes.

Dr. George Appleby was everything a small-town doctor should be: polite, gentle, and caring. But under the surface seethed hidden secret that would burst forth one dark day in 1900.

In many true crime tales, women are all too often the unfortunate victims. In the 1920’s, Hazel Anderson and Helen Depue turned the tables and showed just how ferocious they could be.

William Koenig came to America with his family for a better opportunity. On a warm August night in 1870, it ended in tragedy and death.

In 1921, 18-year-old Marie Wick checked into a Fargo hotel while travelling to visit her aunt. What happened that night in Room 30 would become one of the most vicious murders to ever occur in North Dakota.

The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of people. Old and new funeral traditions went by the wayside as people buried the dead any way that they could. Come and see the heartbreaking and strange way of the American funeral during the pandemic.

In 1918, Americans on the home front were supporting their troops fighting in Europe while waging a war of their own against a deadly pandemic. Does one of the souls lost to the flu still haunt a Midwestern college?

If history is made up of small stories, then some of them fall off and disappear, like table scraps. Come and sample a few of these forgotten tales.

As America prepared to fight World War I, the deadliest pandemic the world has ever seen arrived silently. 50 million people died. Do some of them still wander the earth?

Charles Englehart was attacked outside of his car one dark night in 1935. A harmless 70-year-old man liked by everyone, who would commit such an awful crime?