Hinsdale House image taken in 1975. Roger Marsh photo.
A Pennsylvania psychic once told me about a piece of property in the southwestern piece of the state. Over a period of a hundred years, within a three mile radius of a point she had located, a ghastly number of death and agony cases had taken place.
The stories and their numbers were all amazing. There were hangings, murders, suicides, accidental deaths – you get the point. It would seem every family living in close proximity to that spot had suffered multiple tragedies in their families. She made the point that the high numbers of these tragedies in such a small space indicated that some evil lurked there.
The story got my attention, but I walked away wondering. If you could take any spot in the country and do the same calculation – going back 100 years and searching for all forms of death and agony – would there be such a disparity where you could develop – with precision – a series of points in a region where the numbers are much higher than in an average region’s point?
We could give it a cool name – the tragi-meter.
I attempted only once to build a tragic-meter, choosing one Chicago street, and following reports of its tragedies, over time – only to conclude that just about every block along this highly populated north side route included multiple cases of tragedy – right there in the street mainly – if you allowed a long enough period of time. The Tragic Lincoln Project used cross referenced data between murders and other investigated death records from the Chicago Police Department – nicely housed online courtesy of a project with the Northwestern School of Law – and the period's daily newspaper, Chicago Daily News.
I could never come to any conclusion as to whether other conditions allowed for the high number of tragedies along this route other than time – like the fact that this is simply a major population area.
Chicago’s Lincoln Avenue has never publically claimed it has a haunting history as a whole, but the stories strung together in one presentation do paint a particularly rough portrait of what actually occurred. Just to play it safe, you may want to avoid Lincoln and choose another path in that area. But I suspect every major boulevard in this city of 3 million has its own charming history of misfortune.
Nothing paranormal going on here. It’s sadly human nature. That’s why we have a judicial system and prisons.
Now on the paranormal side, are the reports just as evenly spread out – or are there hot spots where events happen at an alarmingly higher level?
Tragic Hinsdale House may be one of those locations.
This rural New York farm house sits precariously on mountain land with more than 7 acres of rolling hills. You approach only along a steep, windy, and unpaved roadway. The home’s construction age and placement suggest that it may have been a stage coach stop or some kind of weigh station for travelers along what was once a rather rough cross country western route.
Multiple stories from past Hinsdale House residents and neighbors suggest that humans and their mechanical friends are just not necessarily welcome on that property. Stories are told of car accidents, bizarre deaths, injuries, hangings, murders, and a strong dose of apparitions, poltergeist activity, and a general litany of both visual and sound bytes from the paranormal side that would make Rod Serling green with envy.
While the history of odd occurrences seems to go back to the early settler days, the modern day account begins with Clara Miller and her incredible period of daring, exploration, and survival of the property. Clara’s book – Echoes of a Haunting: A House in the Country – is a comforting read from the wife and mother’s point of view of a family’s human experience in rural 1970s defending themselves against both poverty and the supernatural. In the end, they walked away from the property with their own tragic history, but Clara’s book colorfully shows off the family’s resilience and love in a pioneering structure as well as revealing how the supernatural manipulated their behaviors. The afterword also shows us that Clara and her family got on with their lives and have had quite a successful and healthy run.
InCahoots.TV is exploring this property August 28-30 as Tremont Avenue Productions (TAP) moves into place, shooting a series of features and short videos. Tragic Hinsdale House has been in pre-production several months now as production schedules and budgets were being created, crew offers made - and the final production script for the exorcism scene was being created.
Local site historian Michael Rambacher is on board, property permissions have been secured from its current owners, and regional actors are in place to play character parts for the exorcism scene. The TAP crew is coming from Chicago, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, although a few slots are open where we will require some local volunteers to fill additional roles in security and as production assistants.
Following the production shoot dates, beginning about early October, we will begin broadcasting weekly segments with both story and video on these pages. Also look for a single page at InCahoots.TV where you can follow along with our production.
For more information on our local shoot, please follow along with us at InCahoots.TV. All necessary updates will be made to this page as they come in.
http://www.examiner.com/x-2764-Paranorm ... -in-August
