Recent Posts
Japanese Forces Use Electrified Fences Against Head Hunters
Some old newspaper articles are strange because of what they describe. Others are disturbing because of the casual way they describe it. This 1908 report…
Wilkes-Barre Mine Cave-In Destroyed Homes in Five Points
In the bitter cold of a January morning in 1883, the people of Wilkes-Barre’s Five Points neighborhood were jolted awake by a sound like an…
Women Jump From Omaha Building to Escape Flames
Women Jump From Omaha Building to Escape Flames On a March afternoon in 1899, a meeting of women in Omaha, Nebraska, turned suddenly into a…
West Farmington Banker Found Murdered
Some crimes arrive in the newspaper almost stripped bare, leaving behind only a few terrible details and a great deal of silence. The 1906 murder…
Woman Saw Mastodons After a Worm Entered Her Brain
According to a 1902 report, Freiburg’s love of flowers led to a horrifying and bizarre end. She would gather roses and sweet peas in great…
Rural Valley Man Dreams of Missing Neighbor’s Body
In February 1925, a strange report out of Kittanning, Pennsylvania, told of a missing man, a repeated dream, and the discovery of a body exactly…
Maine Man Bleeds to Death After Falling on Axe
In March 1899, a Maine woodsman named Daniel Morton set out after dinner with his axe newly sharpened and tucked beneath his arm. He had…
Human Remains Found After Windsor Hotel Fire
The aftermath of a great fire is often worse than the flames themselves. Once the smoke clears, what remains is not only wreckage, but the…
Prisoner Tries to Escape With Rusty Scissors
There is something almost comical about a jailbreak attempted with a rusty pair of scissors, but Harry Kelly’s little excavation project was treated as no…
Heroes and Horror in Tannersville’s Twilight Hotel Fire
In July 1926, the fashionable inn at Tannersville, New York, was destroyed by fire so completely that even counting the dead became difficult. The hotel…
