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The Haunted H House

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Some hauntings are bound to be debunked as soon as there are investigations. This is the case with The Haunted H House, but the true story could have ended so much worse than a ghost haunting. 

The story of the Hauntings of H House was first published in 1921 in the American Journal of Ophthalmology by William Willmer, and was a story of one of his clients. It detailed a family that moved into a new house in 1912 and immediately started experiencing strange things. 

This ghost story quickly found its scientific culprit, but then again, the details of the supposed hauntings the family thought they were under, was scary. Perhaps even scarier than harmless ghosts, as this specific scientific haunting was deadly.

The Family H and Their Hauntings

The family moved into a large house built in the 1870s somewhere in America that was described as ‘Rambling and high-studded,’ and only lit by the flimmering gas lights. In other words, a perfect location for a haunted house. The family is known only as Family H, and it is the wife of the house that tells:

“Mr. H and I had not been in the house for more than a couple of days when we felt very depressed. The house was overpoweringly quiet.”

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The Hauntings started in the small, but got even more detailed and vivid as time went on. And the hallucinations started to get more and more terrefying. 

“One morning, I heard footsteps in the room over my head. I hurried up the stairs. To my surprise, the room was empty. I passed into the next and then into all the rooms on that floor, and then to the floor above to find that I was the only person in that part of the house. Sometimes after I’ve gone to bed, the noises from the store room are tremendous, as if furniture was being piled against the door, as if china was being moved about, and occasionally a long and fearful sigh or wail.”

The Poisonous Gas: Although electricity was around during this time, many homes still used to light the house and war it up using gas. And it was a silent killer for many years in many homes.

The whole family felt it. The kids grew pale and lost their appetite, everyone suffered from headaches and they all started hearing things that weren’t there. Then the vision also started and they all started to believe they saw ghosts:

“On one occasion, in the middle of the morning, as I passed from the drawing room into the dining room, I was surprised to see at the further end of the dining room, coming towards me, a strange woman, dark haired and dressed in black. As I walked steadily on into the dining room to meet her, she disappeared, and in her place I saw a reflection of myself in the mirror, dressed in a light silk waist … On the night of January 15 we went to the opera. That night I had vague and strange dreams, which appeared to last for hours. When the morning came, I felt too tired and ill to get up. G told me that in the middle of the night he woke up, feeling as if someone had grabbed him by the throat and was trying to strangle him. He sat up in bed and had a violent fit of coughing, which lasted about five minutes … G had always slept heavily, never hearing a sound and nothing disturbed him. Now he was continually waking, answering the telephone and the doorbell, which had never rung, and looking for burglars, who never materialized.”

It was not only Mrs. H who had these visions, but her husband, her kids and her servants as well. They happened during the day as well as in the dead of night, and it wasn’t only the mind that got clouded, but their entire body felt ill. Even the plants in the house withered mysteriously.

“Sometimes as I walk along the hall I feel as if someone was following me, going to touch me. You cannot understand it if you haven’t experienced it, but it is real. Some nights after I have been in bed for a while, I have felt as if the bed clothes were jerked off me, and I have also felt as if I had been struck on the shoulder. One night I woke up and saw sitting on the foot of my bed a man and a woman. The woman was young, dark and slight and wore a large picture hat. The man was older, smooth shaven and a little balc. I was parelyzed and couldn’t move, when suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder and I was able to sit up, and the man and the woman faded away.”

The Poisonous Gas Causing Ghost Hauntings

This torture went on for two months with vivid and detailed hallucinations. Then Mrs. H got a visit from her brother that she confided in. He urged her to seek out a doctor as the reason for the haunting could be the furnace, not ghosts. 

And sure enough, when they had the house inspected, they found that the chimney pushed the carbon monoxide into their home and not out the chimney. There was also the case of the gaslights that also contributed to the problem as that type of gas at that time exhumed as much fumes as a car exhaust today. 

The scentless and sightless gas of carbon monoxide can lead to hallucinations, and in the worst case scenario, unconsciousness and death as it is poisoning you by blocking the oxygen to get into your blood. People often report that they hear noises in their ears, bells ringing, rushing sounds after being exposed to it. 

After the leaks were fixed, so was the haunted house. The family felt healthy and when they moved back into the house the visions stopped as well. 

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References

https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/10/the_ghost_story_in_a_scientific_journal.html

Chasing Ghosts: A Tour of Our Fascination with Spirits and the Supernatural by Marc Hartzman 

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The Anson Lights Highway Ghost

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In the quiet Texan town of Anson, a local legend has taken form after small lights no one could explain appeared. Is it the lantern of a ghost or is the Anson lights simply the lights from the cars on the highway?

There is something about the highway, especially along those monotone dusty roads that goes on for hours. The highway can make the mind wander, it takes you down a road, not only geographically, but something happens with the mind as well on long stretches of nothingness. Time passes differently when you are behind the wheel. Perhaps that is what happens along the highway in Anson? Where does the ghostly lights come from then?

Near Abilene, Texas is the quaint town of Anson, that may or may not have been the inspiration for the movie Footloose as they too had an actual no dancing law in the 80s. And although living in that movie sounds cool, living in the real town before Kevin Bacon, does not.

The Anson Lights: According to the local legend, If you drive by the cemetery and flick your light, supposedly the Anson lights will flick back. Is it a ghost? Is the strange light phenomenon because it’s a haunted place? Photo: Paul Cameron on Pexels.com

The landscape around this ghost town by the highway is flat and dusty. Nothing in the horizon except blue sky, red if the dust swirls in the air. The few growing things there is sparse, revealing everything in a spartanic landscape.

Read Also: Check out all of our ghost stories from USA

They don’t really like the fuzz down there, and they certainly don’t like the fuzz the legend the highway ghost had provided them with. “For a long time people were embarrassed by the Anson light,” then mayor (2000) Tom Isbell said in a great article in the Texas Monthly. “Anson has stories to tell, but for some reason we just don’t tell them.”

And for the time being, the town of Anson, is known for the Anson lights.

Where to See the Anson Lights?

The Anson lights have attracted many curious spectators, paranormal investigators and mediums to this town. But perhaps mostly, it is high school students with nothing to do in this no dance town on a Saturday evening. It can be a pretty scary sight in the dead of night, with only nearby coyotes howling and screaming.

Read also: Check out The Palatine Light and the Ghost Ship Behind it for another ghost story behind a strange light phenomenon.

To see the Anson lights, you must drive by the local cemetery, Mount Hope, just outside of the town. Then you follow a dirt road along the graveyard until you reach a crossroad. There you turn, facing the road again and stop your car and flash your lights at the end of the road. If you are lucky, you will see them, something will shine a light back. From the other side at an distance a flickering light can be seen.

The Lantern of a Grieving Mother

But what really is the Anson lights? Surely they are there as numerous Youtube videos and pictures have showed us them, so we do know the phenomenon is a real one, but is it a paranormal one as well? One of the most appealing explanation is of course the supernatural ones. Because a ghost town has its ghost stories as well.

The Haunted Lantern: Many of the ghost stories claim that the Anson Lights are actually the light of a ghost carrying a lantern.

One of the local legend behind the strange lights is the story of a grieving mother looking for her son on winter night. According to the story the mother went out looking for her son with a small lantern in her hand. It was a cold night in the snowy Texas winter and the wind was howling, the night grew darker. She never found him. Or… she hasn’t found him, yet.

It is said that even after her death, she kept on looking for her long lost son who disappeared that one cold fateful night.

This is what is told in The Big Book of Texas Ghost Stories by Alan Brown and in this book there is more than one legend of just who is flickering the lights back by the graveyard.

Read Also: Check out all of our stories about Haunted Cemeteries

In another version of the legend, the mother told her two sons to run to the store to pick up a few things. The mother gave them a lantern that they would flash three times with, if they got into trouble. And they did.

According to this story, the two little boys were killed by an oncoming train on their way home. They are now roaming the nearby area as ghosts, still flashing their light, trying to signal their mother for help.

Debunking the Legend of the Haunted Anson Lights

Who is to say that this ghost story didn’t happen? Perhaps no historic records in any case that we have found. And with every unconfirmed record, there is this voice saying, well… doesn’t really prove it didn’t happen though. What is proven though, is that there is a more logical than paranormal explanation to it.

At Abilene Christian University, a professor brought along his students to prove that the lights were actually coming from traffic lights from a nearby highway than from a ghostly mother with a lantern. With GPS trackers and binoculars, his students were able to document that the light were just lights from cars going south on a nearby road. A thing the Southwestern Ghost Hunters Association had already claimed a long time ago as they didn’t find anything paranormal about the Anson lights either.

Read Also: Another ghost story that got debunked was the hauntings in The Haunted H House

So, everyone happy then? Perhaps not the kids of Anson. The professor issued an apology for the reveal and to the locals of the town felt this was the story they could have fun with. What now? What now for fun?

The Anson lights is the approaching car lights from southbound traffic on US-277. Perhaps that is the true haunting, the cars going away. As the little town of Anson is closing up, boarding up their shops and the cars are streaming passed our out of the town, perhaps that is the true ghost of Anson.

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