The SK story IT gave me this idea. You know like how The Bradley gang was in Derry. Does your town have any wierd or crazy things that happened in it?
Secrets in your town
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We had a deputy that was a serial killer. I was pretty young when this was going on but I remember him getting caught and the trial. How that for freaky? This was a really bad dude and I'm not sure why he is not more well known. He probably killed a lot of people.
Gerard John Schaefer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Also, if I remember this correctly, Schaefer's attorney married Shaefer's wife (ex wife by then) after the trial(s). That's a little crazy too.
Gerard John Schaefer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Also, if I remember this correctly, Schaefer's attorney married Shaefer's wife (ex wife by then) after the trial(s). That's a little crazy too.
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In 1972 an entire family was murdered, with the exception of one adult daughter who lived elsewhere......the case still remains unsolved.
I live in Essaouira, Morocco and it's often I hear of crazy things happening around here. Just last Saturday, at a round about, two men had an argument and one of them cut the hand of the other with a big sword. And there's also that one guy, super tall and skinny, who always walks around the medina wearing about 10 coats at once and I'm not exaggerating, 10, maybe even more, no matter the temperature which gets pretty hot here. And he always has big bits of cotton coming out of his ears. He's just so strange. There's something a little Dark Towery about him though, he fascinates me I have to admit.
Way back when...I musta been in the 4th grade at Tamarack Mills school, this four-gable job on the hill, cast-iron bell that Mr Darcy would ring after recess...and on Wednesdays two cars would pull off the highway, M-26, there where the older boys would burn rubber...a time when gas was relatively cheap and muscle cars were the norm. Friend Kris and I notice the cars pull off the highway, this old buck (to us...what? eleven-year-old?) would get out of one car, walk forward to the car in front of him--an old lady driving that one...and he'd get into the back and lie on the seat. They'd head back the way they came, leaving the one car there and at some point during the day the old man must have retrieved it.
This goes on for some time...and we always thought it was a hoot, the old man getting into the back seat...the lady's head tilted as she looked in the rear view, the car turning slowly around where the older boys burned rubber, Vietnam on the news. At some point, Kris tells me, "That's Arbutus Dow!" I was stumped. Why did Kris's family have a beautice and not our family? What is a beautice? I never asked him and he never confided and Ma wasn't much help, either. Ma? What's a beautice? Huh? She'd wrinkled her face and I'd get exasperated and delete my account with her...or log off and pout. Kris's family has a beautice, I'd tell her...missed again...always on the outside looking in.
It wasn't until years later, not many years after I bought this shack I'm living in...that I learned that the beautice Kris referred to is an old lady lives down the street, Arbutus, unlikely of the chemical family fame. Don't know who the man was, though I have my suspicions. Still a mystery though and that's the way, oh ho, uh huh, I like it.
This goes on for some time...and we always thought it was a hoot, the old man getting into the back seat...the lady's head tilted as she looked in the rear view, the car turning slowly around where the older boys burned rubber, Vietnam on the news. At some point, Kris tells me, "That's Arbutus Dow!" I was stumped. Why did Kris's family have a beautice and not our family? What is a beautice? I never asked him and he never confided and Ma wasn't much help, either. Ma? What's a beautice? Huh? She'd wrinkled her face and I'd get exasperated and delete my account with her...or log off and pout. Kris's family has a beautice, I'd tell her...missed again...always on the outside looking in.
It wasn't until years later, not many years after I bought this shack I'm living in...that I learned that the beautice Kris referred to is an old lady lives down the street, Arbutus, unlikely of the chemical family fame. Don't know who the man was, though I have my suspicions. Still a mystery though and that's the way, oh ho, uh huh, I like it.
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The town had one lynching, back in the late 1800s, I think. A man was accused of, and strongly believed by the local populace to be guilty of, murder. They took their sense of justice into their own hands one night.
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We had a double rape/homicide of two sisters. Of a group that was around at the time, one was convicted and two others were acquitted. There were lots of nuances to the case. It was unsatisfying.
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A guy who was in the witness protection program (for testifying in a prison case where he may well have been the guilty party) came through town on a road trip and killed two 7-Eleven clerks at different local stores. That was part of his interstate murder spree. He was caught and brought back. The DA agreed to a term of life in prison and not go after capital punishment. He pled and was quickly whisked out to another state which, surprise, did have capital punishment. Marion Pruett is roasting his nuts in hell now. He was as evil as they come, and I'm not exaggerating. The world is much better off without him.
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Perhaps the biggest local controversy had to do with the murder of a woman and the prosecution of a young man 10 or 12 years after the crime. There were some dubious tactics used to convict him, he was serving a long jail term, and then defense lawyers started running DNA tests on evidence. DNA testing wasn't that available back then. Based on those tests, which didn't reveal his DNA (but also didn't disprove his presence) and a few other circumstances, he was let out of jail, sued the local government, got millions of dollars in a settlement.
Two of the original prosecutors by that time were judges. The defendant and his supporters campaigned against those judges' retention when they came up, citing their prosecutorial conduct, or claimed misconduct. The judges were not retained. The defendant and supporters were jubilant.
Not so fast. One of the former judges went to a private law practice and makes a fair amount more than a judge's salary, possibly working fewer hours as well. The other one, older, just went ahead and retired comfortably and now has a much more pleasant life.
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We had a double rape/homicide of two sisters. Of a group that was around at the time, one was convicted and two others were acquitted. There were lots of nuances to the case. It was unsatisfying.
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A guy who was in the witness protection program (for testifying in a prison case where he may well have been the guilty party) came through town on a road trip and killed two 7-Eleven clerks at different local stores. That was part of his interstate murder spree. He was caught and brought back. The DA agreed to a term of life in prison and not go after capital punishment. He pled and was quickly whisked out to another state which, surprise, did have capital punishment. Marion Pruett is roasting his nuts in hell now. He was as evil as they come, and I'm not exaggerating. The world is much better off without him.
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Perhaps the biggest local controversy had to do with the murder of a woman and the prosecution of a young man 10 or 12 years after the crime. There were some dubious tactics used to convict him, he was serving a long jail term, and then defense lawyers started running DNA tests on evidence. DNA testing wasn't that available back then. Based on those tests, which didn't reveal his DNA (but also didn't disprove his presence) and a few other circumstances, he was let out of jail, sued the local government, got millions of dollars in a settlement.
Two of the original prosecutors by that time were judges. The defendant and his supporters campaigned against those judges' retention when they came up, citing their prosecutorial conduct, or claimed misconduct. The judges were not retained. The defendant and supporters were jubilant.
Not so fast. One of the former judges went to a private law practice and makes a fair amount more than a judge's salary, possibly working fewer hours as well. The other one, older, just went ahead and retired comfortably and now has a much more pleasant life.
The little suburb to Stockholm where i live is rather quiet... But just recently there was some that wanted to do a break in in the mall. Rob the jewellery store and go away. It.s a little weird just because how inept they were. To get in they drove a van through the doors to the mall. Then they rushed to the jewellery store busted that window and got back to start to put evverything in the van. What they hadn't expected was that the van was stuck in the opening of the mall and could go neither backwards or forwards. They then tried to bend it free but they only result was that their jewels and what else they got got stuck in a box under the van that now had its two backwheels in the air. They were caught and the police had enormous problems to get the van free again. It stood there for nearly two days. They were of course ridiculed in the press.
A bit more weird is a girl some threehundred years back that was married with two kids when she found out that this is not what i want of life. She disappeared, cut her hair, took a job as a soldier and farmworker and married a girl. None suspected she was a woman and not a man (well, perhaps her wife) but otherwise she fooled everyone for years. She even made a thing that she had in her pants so it looked like a penis. In these times it was deathpenalty for women to work as soldiers and marry women so it was important for her not to get caught. In the end she did. She was sentenced and executed. The wife claimed that she had thought she was a man butnoone believed her but didn't want to punish her. The situation was embarrasing enough they thought. Everybody was a bit redfaced because they hadn't suspected anything. And she was a good soldier too which made it worse. Obviuosly she was a very strongwilled woman and very rare for her time. The place she was working at is just a short walk away from where i'm writing this.
A bit more weird is a girl some threehundred years back that was married with two kids when she found out that this is not what i want of life. She disappeared, cut her hair, took a job as a soldier and farmworker and married a girl. None suspected she was a woman and not a man (well, perhaps her wife) but otherwise she fooled everyone for years. She even made a thing that she had in her pants so it looked like a penis. In these times it was deathpenalty for women to work as soldiers and marry women so it was important for her not to get caught. In the end she did. She was sentenced and executed. The wife claimed that she had thought she was a man butnoone believed her but didn't want to punish her. The situation was embarrasing enough they thought. Everybody was a bit redfaced because they hadn't suspected anything. And she was a good soldier too which made it worse. Obviuosly she was a very strongwilled woman and very rare for her time. The place she was working at is just a short walk away from where i'm writing this.
In the late 80s, a well-liked and respected math teacher at the high school here was having an affair with the principal, who was unmarried. They were also neighbors, and the teacher and her family and the principal all spent time together regularly.
The math teacher spent months, unbeknown to her lover, planning her husband's murder. She called her husband's place of work and disguised her voice and made vague threats, but never mentioned him by name. She called neighbors along their street to say there was a man roaming the neighborhood in overalls and hat, be careful, and called the police to complain about this mysterious stranger.
One weekend when the lover principal was out of town, and after spending the night at a basketball game with her family, she went to lover's house and took his gun. Dressed in overalls and hat and covered her face, she tied up her children and then tried to shoot her husband. She had loaded the gun with the wrong ammo, so that didn't work, and ended up stabbing him to death with a hunting knife.
Then she drove outside of town, stripped off the clothes and set fire to everything. Ran off into the prairie to hide. A passing motorist stopped and the fire was put out before everything burned. She was found and started telling this story of the mysterious stranger, he broke in, I ran.
It didn't take the police a full 24 hours to figure out what really happened. She was staying at a friend's house when someone let her know they were coming for her. She went into their bedroom, took a shotgun into the bathroom and killed herself. The principal resigned.
This happened well before we lived here, I wouldn't have known about it at all, but I guess one of those true crime shows is coming to town to film a story about it for their show. Saw a blurb in the paper so looked up the story.
The math teacher spent months, unbeknown to her lover, planning her husband's murder. She called her husband's place of work and disguised her voice and made vague threats, but never mentioned him by name. She called neighbors along their street to say there was a man roaming the neighborhood in overalls and hat, be careful, and called the police to complain about this mysterious stranger.
One weekend when the lover principal was out of town, and after spending the night at a basketball game with her family, she went to lover's house and took his gun. Dressed in overalls and hat and covered her face, she tied up her children and then tried to shoot her husband. She had loaded the gun with the wrong ammo, so that didn't work, and ended up stabbing him to death with a hunting knife.
Then she drove outside of town, stripped off the clothes and set fire to everything. Ran off into the prairie to hide. A passing motorist stopped and the fire was put out before everything burned. She was found and started telling this story of the mysterious stranger, he broke in, I ran.
It didn't take the police a full 24 hours to figure out what really happened. She was staying at a friend's house when someone let her know they were coming for her. She went into their bedroom, took a shotgun into the bathroom and killed herself. The principal resigned.
This happened well before we lived here, I wouldn't have known about it at all, but I guess one of those true crime shows is coming to town to film a story about it for their show. Saw a blurb in the paper so looked up the story.
Strange that when somebody asks for secrets, the first thing anybody thinks of is murderers. Those are hardly secret, eh?
On the weird or crazy front, I come from a little town in Ohio where there's a local urban myth about Gore orphanage. It burned down, and local legend says that if you drive up that road on the right night of the year, you can hear the kids screaming and see a nun burn to death in the middle of the road. Many a stoned teenage night sees thrill seekers cruising up and down Gore Orphanage road looking for ghosts. Mostly to get their girls alone in a car on a desolate road in the middle of the night.
I've never gone looking myself, but one thing I have heard of as fact is that a lot of cars will quit running when people drive through a dip in the road at one particular spot. They've done testing there, and have found unusually high electromagnetic readings with no explainable source. So it's possible that cars with delicate electrical systems would be affected.
On the weird or crazy front, I come from a little town in Ohio where there's a local urban myth about Gore orphanage. It burned down, and local legend says that if you drive up that road on the right night of the year, you can hear the kids screaming and see a nun burn to death in the middle of the road. Many a stoned teenage night sees thrill seekers cruising up and down Gore Orphanage road looking for ghosts. Mostly to get their girls alone in a car on a desolate road in the middle of the night.
I've never gone looking myself, but one thing I have heard of as fact is that a lot of cars will quit running when people drive through a dip in the road at one particular spot. They've done testing there, and have found unusually high electromagnetic readings with no explainable source. So it's possible that cars with delicate electrical systems would be affected.
Two famous missing paperboy cases in Des Moines and West Des Moines remain unsolved and are still listed by the DCI for the State of Iowa. Johnny Gosch disappeared in September of 1982 and Eugene Martin disappeared August 1984 under eerily similar circumstances.
Houdini in Omaha
Houdini in Omaha
Great thread! I've nothing remotely interesting to add (well, apart from a mother who killed her two kids and stuck them in the boot of her car a few years back but that's not a mystery, that's just horrific). I'm reading your replies with interest 
Not a secret, not weird, not crazy, just sentimental.
Back in the '30s, the rough railroad workers in town adopted a stray pregnant dog, against depot policy. They called her Annie and made sure that her puppies got homes. In apparent gratitude, Annie hung out at the train station for the next 14 years, well into the '40s, and would greet travelers as they came off the train.
Everybody got to know Annie at the train station and from her many years of being the town's ambassador to the arrivals. Visitors would be surprised when people coming back home stopped to pet Annie before greeting their own families. Stories were told about military men returning from the war, weeping when Annie greeted them, because they knew they were home again, and her licking the tears from their faces.
When Annie died, the railroad men buried her and put up a marker with the inscription, "From the C&S men to Annie our dog, 1934-1948." When the town focused on the general locale for the new transit station, they proposed to respectfully relocate the grave. The ensuing public howl convinced them otherwise, and the new plans accommodated the grave, where it still sits today. A statue of Annie has a place outside the front door of the town library and is the starting point for the annual Annie's Walk.
Back in the '30s, the rough railroad workers in town adopted a stray pregnant dog, against depot policy. They called her Annie and made sure that her puppies got homes. In apparent gratitude, Annie hung out at the train station for the next 14 years, well into the '40s, and would greet travelers as they came off the train.
Everybody got to know Annie at the train station and from her many years of being the town's ambassador to the arrivals. Visitors would be surprised when people coming back home stopped to pet Annie before greeting their own families. Stories were told about military men returning from the war, weeping when Annie greeted them, because they knew they were home again, and her licking the tears from their faces.
When Annie died, the railroad men buried her and put up a marker with the inscription, "From the C&S men to Annie our dog, 1934-1948." When the town focused on the general locale for the new transit station, they proposed to respectfully relocate the grave. The ensuing public howl convinced them otherwise, and the new plans accommodated the grave, where it still sits today. A statue of Annie has a place outside the front door of the town library and is the starting point for the annual Annie's Walk.
That made me a little verklempt.
Reminds me of this story:
Hachiko, an Akita from Tokyo.
Hachiko was brought to Tokyo in 1924 by his owner, a college professor named Hidesamuro Ueno. Each day, when Ueno left for work, Hachiko would stand by the door to watch him go. When the professor came home at 4 o’clock, Hachiko would go to the Shibuya Station to meet him.
Though this simple act alone shows a tremendous amount of loyalty, that’s not the end of it: The following year, Ueno died of a stroke while at the university. Hachiko didn’t realize that he was gone, and so the dog returned to the train station every single day to await his master. He became such a familiar presence there, in fact, that the station master set out food for the dog and gave him a bed in the station. Even so, Hachiko never shifted loyalties –every day at 4 o’clock, he hopefully waited by the tracks as the train pulled in, searching for his best friend’s face among the people getting off.
Hachiko’s love for his master impressed many people who passed through the station, including one of Ueno’s former students, who became fascinated by the Akita breed after seeing Hachiko. He discovered that there were only 30 Akitas living in Japan, and began to write articles about Hachiko and his remarkable breed, turning the world’s most loyal dog into a household name, and creating a resurgence in popularity for the Akita.
Hachiko died in 1935, after 10 long years of waiting for his master. But the dog would not be forgotten –a year before his death, Shibuya Station installed a bronze statue of the aging dog, to honor its mascot. Though the statue was melted down during World War II, a new version was created in 1948 by the son of the original artist. Go to the station now, and you’ll be able to see the bronze statue of Hachiko – still waiting, as ever, for his master to come home.
Houdini in Omaha
