Ep. 11 - Thornhaven Manor

Thornhaven Manor is located at 2172 S. Spiceland Road in New Castle, Indiana near the Big Blue River Valley. The dilapidated home sits on seven acres of former farmland that is encircled by marshland and woods. The manor was built in 1845 and originally sat on a property that stretched to 1,000 acres. Many people died in the house from illness, but in the early 1900s, this home would be the scene of a murder by poison. Today, there are reputedly many spirits at this location with the most prominent ones belonging to people connected to that murder.

Simon T. Powell was one of the richest men in Indiana. Powell was born in 1821 in Cambridge City, Indiana, but his parents eventually moved to Illinois. When he was fourteen, he was struck with what was deemed Palsy and his excessive swimming was blamed for causing that. The affliction would cripple him for the rest of his life. He attended Vincennes College and completed his education under Prof. Samuel H.Hoshour at the seminary in E. Cambridge. By 1841, he was living in New Castle and would spend the rest of his life there. He married Elizabeth Thornburg that same year. She was a widow with five children and came from a prominent family in the community. She and Simon had four children together.

Simon had made a nice income serving as the Deputy County Clerk and he held that position until 1855. Simon and Elizabeth built a large manor house in 1845.The house was 6,000 square feet and built in the Italianate architectural style. The family was very acquainted with death. The youngest child died in the manor at the age of two. One of their sons, Orlistus, fought for the north during the Civil War at the Battle of Chickamauga. He died there and was placed in a mass grave. His father Simon traveled to the battlefield and found his son in the grave. He brought the remains home to be buried in the family plot. The third oldest child the couple had was Ester Catherine and she passed away in the home at the age of 27,  just six years after her marriage to William Elliot in 1869. Supposedly, one of the sons' wives left a suicide note at the house and went to drown herself in the river.

People claim the house was a stop on the Underground Railroad and there is an area down in the basement that does seem to be a place where slaves could hide and Simon was accused of harboring a slave. Elizabeth died in 1881 and Simon married Melvina Conway in 1883. Simon Powell died in the house on October 5, 1901. In the early 1900s, the manor would become the scene of a fiendish murder plot that seems to have led to hauntings. That plot was carried out by a young black man named Frank Thurman in 1906. He was married to one of Reuben Bailey's daughters. Bailey was a highly respected black caretaker at Thornhaven Manor and he didn't really care for his son-in-law. His perceptions about Thurman were right as it seems that Thurman took a certain interest in his wife's sister. No one knows if he propositioned her into entering into an affair with him or if he decided to just take what he wanted, but he ended up sexually assaulting his sister-in-law, Malita. She ended up pregnant, but was unwillingly to tell anybody what happened because Thurman had threatened to kill her. But soon the truth was out. Reuben Bailey was furious and he planned to report the crime to the authorities. Frank was not about to let that happen and he devised a scheme to poison the family and thus rid himself of any problems. He put arsenic in their coffee.

From the Indianapolis Star dated March 11, 1906: Charged with Poisoning, Sequel to Death of Reuben Bailey at Newcastle: "Frank Thurman, colored, was arrested this afternoon on a charge of criminal assault preferred by Miss Malitia Bailey, colored, who also accuses him of the murder of her father three weeks ago in an attempt to cover up the criminal assault. The victim is a sister of Thurman's wife. The police are now investigating the charge that it was Thurman who placed poison in the coffee at the Bailey home which resulted in the death of Reuben Bailey, father of the girl, and the serious illness of Mrs. Bailey and the girl herself. It was Thurman's purpose, the girl asserts, to poison her and thus rid himself of the trouble, but the method employed by him resulted in the death of her father. She alleges that Thurman threatened to kill her if she made known her condition, but she finally went to the officers and made the confession. The police have been working on the theory that bailey was poisoned by thieves bent on robbery. When taken into custody Thurman was badly frightened and at first admitted his guilt, but later made a denial of everything. When the coffee, which caused the death of Bailey and the serious illness of the other members of the family, was examined by the State chemist, it is said he found that it contained large quantites of arsenic."

The Greenfield Evening Star reported on May 8, 1906, "The majority of the jurors are farmers. Prosecutor Barnard said that the state would be able to prove that Thurman, when in jail, said that he had committed the crime. The jury will be quartered at the Court House during the trial. Tomorrow Mrs. Bailey, widow of the murdered man, will be placed on the stand. The crime for which Thurman is being tried was committed on Jan 28. Reuben Bailey and family had spent the previous day, Sunday, away from home. Shortly after breakfast was eaten Mr. Bailey, wife and daughter, Matilda, became violently ill, and a physician was summoned. Their sufferings were terrible, and the symptoms were those of poisoning. Despite the heroic efforts of the physicians Bailey died in the afternoon, but the others recovered. An investigation was started, and it became evident that poison had been placed in the coffee, as all those who drank the coffee were made ill. The coffee pot was sent to Indianapolis for examination by Dr. Hurty, who found that it contained enough arsenic to kill a dozen persons. The authorities finally arrested Thurman, after Bailey's daughter had filed a charge against him and openly charged him with killing her father in an attempt to kill her. Thurman was arrested and admitted the charge filed by the girl, but denied the poisoning. The grand jury returned an indictment against Thurman, and the evidence has been kept entirely from the public."

Thurman was arrested  and found guilty. He died in jail. Thornhaven Manor fell into disrepair and sat abandoned for years starting in the 1970s. A man named Steve Miller purchased the property in May of 2012. He is the one who named the property Thornhaven Manor. The name was inspired by all the thorn trees on the property. He had planned to restore the property to its original glory and there was a lot of work that needed to be done. The paint was peeling and one part of the roof was sagging heavily. The basement was unfinished with three wells. 

Thornhaven Manor had been featured on Ghost Adventures and Ghost Brothers. The spirits at this location are very aggressive, particularly towards men. The full-bodied apparitions of both Frank Thurman and Reuben Bailey have been seen in the house. The basement is particularly haunted. People claim to have been punched in the kidney area when down there. Mists float about in the basement and disembodied voices have been heard. EVPs have been recorded of a spirit voice believed to belong to Thurman. He actually claimed to be that spirit when asked by paranormal investigators. EVPs have also picked up the voices of men that seem to be arguing. Thermal cameras pick up figures and several shadow figures have been photographed. A barn on the property is reportedly haunted as well with weird photo phenomenon, cold spots and odd noises.

Steve claims that he had no idea that the manor was haunted when he bought it, but he embraces the haunts and had invited paranormal investigators to come study the property. The money earned from that was used to pay for the costly renovations. Steve invited a psychic to come through and read the house and he was told that there were forty-seven spirits in the house. It would appear that the property is permanently closed now and no one has been able to investigate there for several years. 

Miller and his mother had an experience very early on after getting the keys. They were on the front porch. He said, "And when we were there going through bags, we heard a scream come from inside the house. But then we heard it again. I went running into the main stairs. I yell upstairs, ‘Is someone here? Anybody hurt?’–and then nothing, but all I could smell was roses. It was a crazy amount of an old school perfume rose smell and that was my first instance and I was like, ‘What is going on?'" Miller decided to invite a paranormal investigator to come to the manor and he recounted, "And we were just sitting talking amongst ourselves and you just heard this loud slam downstairs and it sounded like four to five people were walking in, plain as day. So we were coming down the stairs thinking we were going to confront some teenagers or whatever. Not a door open, not a door closed. So after that, we kinda knew, yeah, something is going on here.”

Paranormal investigator Jada Craig had investigated the manor several times. She said, "We did hear some footsteps and there was this dragging sound. And there were multiple times after that that I came here I would hear that. There is a walker that is upstairs, so that kind of made a little sense. The feeling just swirls around you almost like a siphon or tornado." Could this dragging sound be a residual noise from the crime? Perhaps the ill dragging themselves? 

 Despite the claim that the spirits seem more negative towards men, there was a mother and daughter team that was conducting a spirit box session in which the messages coming through the box got more and more negative, finally demanding that the women leave. When they refused, they both felt a burning sensation running down their backs. They ran from the house and the rest of their team lifted up their shirts to see scratch marks on their backs. The Southern Indiana Ghost Hunters were doing an investigation in the basement attempting to catch EVPs. They noticed that there were a couple of puddles of water near the wells. At one point, they witnessed what appeared to be a footprint come down into the puddle as if someone or something had walked right through it. This happened three separate times. One of their investigators had to leave the house after feeling very nauseous and actually threw up three times.

The group reported the most compelling evidence caught on the property, which was also shared on the Ghost Brothers' episode:

"Amber reported something messing with her hair and that it was getting very cold behind her. We all then started getting cold chills and Gabe turned the gun towards Amber. Gabe shouted "Mom! What the heck is this?! It's moving!!" I looked at the Thermal Gun and you could see this thing moving right outside the bay window that Amber was sitting in front of  with her back to and it started to move inside towards us! By this time all of us but Amber were looking at this apparition on the Thermal and all saw the exact same thing! I run out of the building and around to the window to make sure nothing or no one was there and of course there was not! We captured four photos on the Thermal Imaging Gun of what we saw."

Those photos definitely show some kind of figure that is purple colored, standing outside the window, right behind one of the female investigators who is glowing with a full heat signature. 

The Ghost Brothers used an Xcam SLS camera in their episode. The Xcam is a ‘Structured Light Sensor’ Camera System that has a variety of sensors from ultrasonic distance detection to thermal temperature sensing to light frequency sensing. It can map out human forms, even when invisible. The Ghost Brothers picked up two figures using this device and those figures even responded to requests to raise their arms to indicate that the figures could hear the investigators. The figures appeared to fight with each other as well. What makes this interesting is that another investigation of Thornhaven headed by two other paranormal groups, Paranormal And Truth Hunters and Jefferson County Paranormal, had similar results using the Xcam. They picked up an anomaly like a human figure and there was a red coloring that it gave off that was picked up by the camera. It grew in proportions and moved.

Has Frank Thurman returned to the scene of his crime after his death? Is one of his victim's still there in the house? Are there other spirits? Is Thornhaven Manor haunted? That is for you to decide!