Phantasmal Crime

Is it possible that some kind of great evil could whisper in the ear of a man and compel him to kill? That is what Matthias Schambacher claimed. The German Schambacher had immigrated to America and eventually opened an inn with his wife in 1851. The couple would use the cover of their inn to murder people and do away with their bodies. Those murders left behind ghosts and Schambacher may have even gotten a final strike from God, when lightning hit his tombstone as he was lowered into the ground. The natural and the supernatural seem to occupy the same place here. The Blue Ridge Mountains are gorgeous with their tree covered peaks and blue-green hue. I've driven the Blue Ridge Parkway and spent time in the Crown Jewel of the range, Asheville. The entire range is just amazing with many peaks, all identified with individual names. One of these peaks is Hawk Mountain, which rises to 1,521 feet. Many take advantage of several of the hiking trails that traverse the 2600 acre Hawk Mo...

There is a town Down Under with a very peculiar annual festival. This event is called The Festival of Fisher's Ghost. And not only is this a week long celebration(?), honor(?), commemoration(?) or whatever one wants to coin it about a ghost, but the Fisher referred to, was murdered. Campbelltown is a big city in New South Wales, Australia. The town was founded by Governor Lachian Macquarie in 1820 and he named it for his wife, Elizabeth Campbell. The Dharawal People were here long before that and they gravitated to the area because of the Georges River. Before Campbelltwon was founded, the area was referred to as the Cowpastures because a herd of wild cattle was discovered here in 1795. Apparently, they had descended from a herd of cattle that escaped their ranch in 1788. Governor Macquarie was described as a craggy old Scot and he apparently had a penchant for appointing ex-convicts to high positions of trust. He was also very generous with land grants and London wasn't happy ...

Sometimes traditional methods of murder investigation fail and law enforcement seeks unconventional ways to solve a crime. One of those unorthodox ways is asking psychics for guidance. And there have been crimes that have been solved with the help of psychics. The Jack the Ripper case was never solved, but a psychic was brought in to try to help. Most people have probably never heard this piece of the mysterious case. But this psychic just may have solved the crime. Nancy Grace hosted a show in 2005 featuring psychic detectives. There were two cases highlighted. The first was about a former paratrooper named Dennis Prado that had gone missing. Police couldn't find him and a Sergeant Fernando Realyvasquez decided to use a psychic detective named Annette Martin to find Prado after the police were unable to find him. Martin gave the Sergeant specific details about the case no one could know, so he handed her a map of a park where they thought he went missing. This park was 2,000 acres...

 In 1953, a horrific kidnapping and murder captured the attention of the nation. The perpetrators were Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Emily Brown Heady and the victim was a sweet and innocent six-year-old boy named Bobby Greenlease. Bonnie and Carl were put to death in the gas chamber at the Missouri State Penitentiary for their crime. And it would seem that although their bodies left the prison, their spirits have not and they continue to haunt the abandoned halls of death row. The 1930s in America was the heyday of kidnapping for ransom with rich families as the target. In Kansas City alone, three high-profile kidnappings occurred that included a city manager, the owner of a drug company and the manager of a garment firm. The most famous 1930 case was the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping, which involved the son of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh and his wife Anne had retreated to a 390-acre estate to privatize their lives a bit. Their 20-month-old son, Charles Jr.,...

Prisons are notorious for being haunted. They are places of such strong emotion, that isn't surprising. There are a couple of areas of jails that lend themselves more to haunting activity: solitary confinement and Death Row. Whether one supports the death penalty or not, there is no question that some people commit such heinous crimes that it is hard to imagine, that anything else could be justice other than the death penalty. There are several murderers who have met their final demise at the end of a rope, an electric chair or a needle. Is it possible that their spirits have remained on this side of the veil? Perhaps they are not welcome anywhere else. The concept of an area in a jail specifically set aside for those doomed to face execution is actually a fairly new one. People have awaited death in prison-like setting for centuries, but there wasn't always a "Death Row." The term "death row" didn't become official until the 20th century. However, codif...

Suggested by: Lindsay Doane-Large      Many of us have some family ancestry that has left us with skeletons in our closets? For Lindsay, that family ancestry included the Doan Gang. The Doan Gang was no small entity. There were at least 60 members of this gang and many of them were from the Doan family, hence the gang's name. Some went to prison, some escaped and some were executed. Despite being Quakers, they took part in a variety of crimes, including espionage during the American Revolution. This made them an enemy of America. There are a few legends and myths connected to the Doans, including stories of secret cave hideouts and hidden treasure. And some of those legends include some ghost stories.  Lindsay wrote to us, "I just wanted to share a dark piece of history that my family embraces that I thought you might find interesting. My extended family on my maternal father's side has a lot of history that is well-known to the extended family. There are historical ...

The Victorian Era in Britain was a tough time for women, particularly if they were single mothers. Desperate women would find themselves pregnant after giving themselves to a man hoping he would take care of them. Or many times they would fall into sex work and end up pregnant. The fix of an opium laden tincture to cause a miscarriage was incredibly dangerous, so there were not many options and most didn't have the means to care for a child. But they also didn't have time to care for their child because they needed to work. Thus, they would need to find someone to care for their child. And along came this angel named Amelia Dyer. She was willing to take on any child and care for them. But Dyer was anything but an angel. Her nickname became the "Baby Butcher" for good reason as it is possible that she murdered 400 babies. Eventually she was tried, convicted, sentenced to death and executed. Her end came at Newgate Prison and now her spirit seems to be haunting a c...