Haunted Carbondale

Haunted Carbondale walking tours will start up on the 10th , leaving the store at 6 p.m on the evenings of the 10th, 17, 22 and 29th . We decided to move the third and fourth ones from Friday to Wednesday so as not to conflict with the Homecoming music festival and Halloween.

Haunted Carbondale Tour

 This Friday is our final scheduled Haunted Carbondale tour of the season, though you can always schedule one as long as you have at least 4 people and your schedule meets with Scott's. 

On October 11ths tour, we had two interesting incidents happen. During the tour itself, we were in the Main Street office when we heard 3 light knocks that sounded as if they came from the front door, though the people on the tour though they sounded as if they came from a table in the office.

the other incident took place on Sunday afternoon. I was putting away Saluki flags from Homecoming weekend. I was in the freight shipping section of the old train depot and I heard what sounded like two women talking to each other in the southern section of the depot. I could not make out what they said and the conversation only lasted a few seconds. I took a look around inside and outside but did not see anyone but, if they were outside, they could have quickly walked away.

Haunted Illinois

 Currently for your paranormal pleasure we have Monsters of Illinois, Big Book of Illinois Ghost Stories and Haunted Illinois in stock, all by Troy Taylor, who has written about Illinois ghosts, monsters and weird stuff for over 2 decades.

Haunted Carbondale Walking Tours

 Come take a walk on the dark side of Carbondale Every Friday and Saturday night at 7 p.m. Throughout October. Hear stories of the Rain House, Hundley House, Woodlawn and Oakland Cemetaries. $10 per person, minimum 4 people . Dress for the weather and wear comfortable walking shoes. Those 6 and under free with a parent or guardian.

Haunted Carbondale

 Just updated the Haunted Carbondale page with some more information about booking a private walking tour. We will have our regular Friday and Saturday night tours on most nights during October but you do have the option of going out on a different night or even afternoon.

Haunted Carbondale Rain House

 

I have no idea how this house acquired the name “Rain House” but Jim Justus refers to it by that name in his 2009 book Weird Egypt. The house stands at the corner of Poplar and  Oak and, back in 1982, was the property of a SIUC marketing professor by the name of Sion Raveed, who before coming to the university had been involved in some questionable international money transactions. Along with teaching at SIUC, Raveed also acquired several houses in the Poplar Street area, subdividing and renting them out to students. At the time, SIUC was still seeing high numbers of student enrolling, finally peaking at around 24,000 about 1990. This influx of students produced a concurrent demand for student housing. Many of the mobile homes parked around the city date back to this era and Raveed took full advantage of the demand, in the case of Rain House hanging curtains to divide the basement into living quarters.

Spring break of 1982 found Carbondale deserted, as students and faculty both deserted the town for other climes. Most faculty and students returned to class the Monday after break, Raveed a noticeable absence. A second day passed without Raveed showing for classes. Meanwhile, the residents of Rain House started noticing a foul odor coming from the basement. Originally thought of as a particularly vile bad of laundry left by a student that had not yet returned, the smell increased in foulness. Attempts to contact Raveed to have something done about it proved futile so a house resident finally ventured into the laundry room from whence the stench emanated. Finding a laundry bag the source of the smell, the student opened it and inside found Raveed’s body stuffed inside with over a dozen stab wounds in the chest.

Due to Raveed’s international connections, this is the only time, as far as I know, that local, state and federal authorities all investigated the same crime. Unfortunately, despite the amount of investigative power focused on the murder, the authorities did not capture a suspect until a couple of years later when Raveed’s former property manager, who had left Carbondale for Canada, confessed to his current girlfriend that he had stabbed Raveed during an argument.  Extradited to the US, he was tried and convicted.  Even Raveed’s funeral was somewhat strange as only a few members of the marketing faculty along with one lone woman attended the funeral in Pleasant Grove Memorial Park off old Highway 13. Saying she was his sister, she quickly wrapped up his affairs and left, never, as far as I know, visiting the grave or Carbondale again. If you want to visit Sion Raveed’s grave, it is located along the road in the far right corner of Pleasant Grove but be sure to stop by during daylight hours

Over the years, residents have reported the smells of both something dead and a strong cigar (Raveed was known to enjoy a good cigar). A strong breeze has been felt moving through the house and televisions have changed channels by themselves.  Lights and fans turn on and off by themselves and dogs have always been uncomfortable there. If you stop by, remember the house is private property and best viewed from the sidewalk.

Haunted Carbondale Oakland Cemetary

 Turning right on Oakland Avenue where it intersects with West Main Street  and heading north will soon bring you to Oakland Cemetary. While Oakland Cemetery is older and has the mystery sarcophagus which visitors can see at any time, Oakland Cemetery has far more incidents of ghosts and just downright strange incidents. Both J. C. and Luella Hundley, whom you might remember from the earlier article on Hundley House, as is Hundley’s son (and prime suspect in their murder) Virgil. There is at least one zinc tombstone in the cemetery. Zinc proved a popular material for tombstones for a period in the 1870s as it was cheaper and easier to form than granite and did not oxidize like bronze. However, stones made from it are hollow and thus more susceptible to damage than granite or bronze work is. With some searching, oblong depressions can be found along the north edge of the cemetery in blocks 80, 81 and 82. This marks the area of a Potter’s Field where transients and those too poor to afford a funeral and stone were buried, generally in a cheap wooden coffin. As the coffin decayed, the ground above it collapsed forming the depression. During the late 1800s, when the ICRR ran along the north side of the  cemetery,  if a hobo or transient was found dead on the train, workers would wrap them up and, when the train passed by a local cemetery like Oakland, pitch the body off the train into the cemetery, where it would receive a pauper’s burial the next day. Those unfortunate souls may account for the ghostly lights that passersby at night on North Oakland have reported seeing floating along the north edge of the cemetery and over the abandoned ICRR railbed (tracks were removed in the 1990s). In case you fancy a short road trip, similar lights have been spotted along the railroad tracks near Boskydell and Makanda.

There have also been reports of a young woman dressed in white seen walking among the stones on the eastern side of the cemetery. This may related to the stone of Thelma Wise, age 26 at the time of her death. Her stone, also in the eastern part of Oakland, reads “Murdered by Unknown Hands”, though official records indicate she died a suicide in Chicago and returned by her family to Carbondale for burial.

There is also the Schwartz Mausoleum, also located in the eastern section of the cemetery.  People have reported it illuminated from inside after dark as well as finding the doors unlocked on occasion.  One story tells of a young man who, while in the cemetery after dark (don’t do this, it is a violation of Carbondale city ordinances), saw the lighted mausoleum and found the door open. Bravely, or foolhardily, he entered only to see the image of a young woman in a stained glass panel at the other end of the crypt turn and look at him. Naturally, he passed out, only to wake the next morning on the cemetery grass outside the mausoleum . Up until about a decade ago, a visitor to the mausoleum early in the morning (after 6 a.m. , remember those ordinances), a visitor would often find holy candles and cards on the low steps leading to the door. However, in recent years, either those who left them have stopped or the city has been much more diligent about removing them.

So take your pick:  glowing lights, ghostly woman or spooky mausoleum.  Just be sure to visit Oakland Cemetery during daylight hours and content yourself with watching from the road after dark.

Haunted Carbondale Walking Tour

 If you want to take one of the Haunted Carbondale Walking Tours, we have three tours remaining:  Friday October 23, Friday Oct 30 and Saturday Oct 31. All tours cost $10 per person, kids under 6 are free and leave the store at 7 p.m. Private tours at other times are available, schedule permitting, for $20 per person with a minimum of 2 people

Haunted Carbondale--Shryock Auditorium

 

One of the oldest buildings remaining on the SIUC campus, Shryock Auditorium opened its doors to the public in 1918 and since then has hosted performances and presentations by many celebrated people including President William Howard Taft, Depeche Mode, VP (at the time) Richard M. Nixon, Carol Channing,  Buckminister Fuller, Arlo Gutherie, and Paula Poundstone to name a few, as well as the funeral of the man whose name it bears and who died in his office in the building just before the spring student convocation in 1935, Henry William Shryock. According to some, he never left.

Shryock joined the English department at what is now SIUC in 1894 and worked his way up the ladder to assume the office of the President in 1913. During his time as President, he oversaw the building of the first campus power plant, the creation of a Bureau of Rural Social Work and the construction of the auditorium that now bears his name. After opening, with his funeral as the first event held at Shryock, the Auditorium hosted most major entertainment events on campus until the mid 1960s and the opening of SIU, now Bantera, Arena. Although the entertainment has moved to the Arena, according to a number of people “Henry” as the ghost is known, still walks Shryock and has since 1935, although it is doubtful that such a staid persona as a college president would pull such pranks as moving and hiding items, putting seats in the auditorium up and down or turning off and on the every burning stage light known as “Henry”.

Other reported activities include footsteps backstage and in the balcony, doors opening and closing by themselves and the occasional sighting of a shadowy figure by the building’s massive pipe organ. Several years ago the Little Egypt Ghost Society got permission from the University and hosted a “ghost hunt” in the building for Girl Scouts in the region. Locked in the building to prevent outsiders from slipping in, the Scouts got to handle the Society’s equipment, including the “Ghost Meter”  and EMF detector. During the  “hunt” the Scouts picked up some fragments of voices and temperature changes but nothing more dramatic. Towards the end of the evening, the Scouts and the Society settled into the seats at the front of the auditorium. The Scouts were told, if ghosts were present and wanted to answer questions, they would light up the Meter, I light for yes and 2 for no. The Scouts started questioning “Henry” and the Meter started flashing answers in response, secretly controlled by one of the Society members. It would appear the “real Henry” did not care for this and made its feelings known by slamming hard a door to the right of the stage, which caused everyone to jump, ending the Q&A.

While the rest of the Society packed up and moved the Scouts out of the Auditorium, a pair of Society members  investigated the area from where the slam had come. Every door they tried had a damper on it, designed to prevent it from making the slamming sound. They did find a door leading to the outside that did slam loudly, but it was locked and they had to get the keys from the SIUC staff member to open it. So what slammed the door? Perchance the “real Henry” got annoyed with the “Fake Henry” and wanted to show his displeasure. It is also doubtful that the University would look favorably on visitors wandering the halls without permission, so without checking for hours, best to view the Auditorium from Old Main Mall.

Haunted Carbondale Hundley House

Since the Carbondale Times does not post its material online, we got their permission to post the Haunted Carbondale series on the store blog and will link it to the Haunted Carbondale Page on the store website

Located at 601 West Main Street, Hundley House has attracted national attention for its reported hauntings and for the double murder that took place there the night of  Dec. 12^th 1928. That night, someone shot banker and former Carbondale mayor J. C. Hundley and his wife Luella. The murder remains unsolved and the ghosts still active.

Quite active socially, the Hundleys had returned from an evening out and were finalizing plans to close up the house for the Christmas holidays and decamp for Florida until the New Year.  According to the Hundley’s butler, the last person to see the couple alive, Hundley had gone upstairs to prepare for bed while Mrs. Hundley went over last minute details with him before the couple left by train the following day.  He said later that both appeared in good spirits and were anticipating the trip.

Sometime after midnight, a neighbor across the street up nursing a sick baby heard a gunshot and saw the light go out in Hundley’s bedroom. She called the police but, due to the late hour, the authorities from Murphysboro responded (Carbondale was significantly smaller than Murphysboro at the time and the Hundley property was located at what at the time was the edge of Carbondale) but, due to the rain and muddy roads, took well over an hour to arrive. When they arrived, no one answered at the house and the front door was locked. Entering through the kitchen door, which was shut but unlocked, they found Luella Hundley dead at the foot of the servant’s staircase at the back of the house, while J. C. Hundley lay on his bed, barely alive, but did not survive the trip to the hospital. Both had been shot with what the police later determined was a .45 caliber Colt army revolver.

Suspicion immediately fell on Hundley’s son from his first marriage, Virgil, who, while well liked in the community, had a reputation as a bad businessman continually in need of money. Reportedly, the elder Hundley had just cut his son out of his will but Virgil testified, during his later trial for the murder, that the two men had patched up their differences before the murder. No changed will was ever found and Virgil’s wife testified that he was at home at their house next door the night of the murder. Acquitted of the murders,  Virgil and the other principals in the murder, his wife and his sister Dora left Carbondale. Reportedly working for the railroad for several years, Virgil divorced his wife and eventually returned to Carbondale, purchasing a house on the south side of town where he died in the 1960s. He, his father  and stepmother are all buried near each other in Carbondale’s Oakland Cemetery . The case still remains open and a reward offered.

Since the 1990s, at least, Hundley House has been reportedly haunted by the spirits of J. C. and Luella. Passersby have reported hearing a gunshot and seeing the porch swing moving without a breeze.  Past owners of the house have reported televisions and CD players turning on and off by themselves, doors slamming and groans as if someone in pain, especially around the back staircase.  The  Ghost Lab paranormal investigators investigated Hundley House in 2010 with their investigation appearing on the Discovery Channel on  Jan 8^th 2011. Hundley House recently sold and is in private hands with no indication the new owner welcomes visitors, so best to view Carbondale’s best known haunted house from the sidewalk.