Centralia is a borough and a near ghost town in Columbia County, Pennsylvania, United States. Its population has dwindled from over 2,761 residents in 1890 to 10 in 2010, as a result of a mine fire burning beneath the borough since 1962. Centralia is one of the least-populated municipalities in Pennsylvania.
Centralia is part of the Bloomsburg-Berwick micropolitan area. The borough is completely surrounded by Conyngham Township.
All properties in the borough were claimed under eminent domain by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1992 (and all buildings therein were condemned), and Centralia’s ZIP code was revoked by the Postal Service in 2002. A few residents continue to reside there in spite of the failure of a lawsuit to reverse the eminent domain claim.
NOTE: In the 2006 horror film Silent Hill, the town of Silent Hill has been abandoned due to a prolonged mine fire, which writer Roger Avary says was inspired by Centralia. Aspects of this are shown throughout the movie, such as characters wandering through the misty version of Silent Hill wearing mining gear.
Mine Fire
A small part of the Centralia mine fire as it appeared after being exposed during an excavation in 1969.
In 1962, a fire started in a mine beneath the town and ultimately led to the town being abandoned.
There is some disagreement over the specific event which triggered the fire. David DeKok, after studying available local and state government documents and interviewing former borough council members, argues in Unseen Danger and its successor edition, Fire Underground: The Ongoing Tragedy of the Centralia Mine Fire, that in May 1962, the Centralia Borough Council hired five members of the volunteer fire company to clean up the town landfill, located in an abandoned strip-mine pit next to the Odd Fellows Cemetery. This had been done prior to Memorial Day in previous years, when the landfill was in a different location. On May 27, 1962, the firefighters, as they had in the past, set the dump on fire and let it burn for some time. Unlike in previous years, however, the fire was not fully extinguished. An unsealed opening in the pit allowed the fire to enter the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines beneath Centralia.
Joan Quigley argues in her 2007 book, The Day the Earth Caved In, that the fire had in fact started the previous day, when a trash hauler dumped hot ash or coal discarded from coal burners into the open trash pit. She noted that borough council minutes from June 4, 1962 referred to two fires at the dump, and that five firefighters had submitted bills for “fighting the fire at the landfill area”. The borough, by law, was responsible for installing a fire-resistant clay barrier between each layer,[clarification needed] but fell behind schedule, leaving the barrier incomplete. This allowed the hot coals to penetrate the vein of coal underneath the pit and light the subsequent subterranean fire. [6][7] Another theory of note is the Bast Theory. According to legend, the Bast Colliery coal fire of 1932 was never fully extinguished. In 1962, it reached the landfill area.
In 1979, locals became aware of the scale of the problem when a gas-station owner and then mayor, John Coddington, inserted a stick into one of his underground tanks to check the fuel level. When he withdrew it, it seemed hot, so he lowered a thermometer down on a string and was shocked to discover that the temperature of the gasoline in the tank was 172 °F (77.8 °C). Statewide attention to the fire began to increase, culminating in 1981 when a 12-year-old resident named Todd Domboski fell into a sinkhole 4 feet (1.2 m) wide by 150 feet (46 m) deep that suddenly opened beneath his feet in a backyard. His cousin, 14-year-old Eric Wolfgang, in pulling Todd out of the hole, saved Todd’s life, as the plume of hot steam billowing from the hole was measured as containing a lethal level of carbon monoxide.
In 1984, the U.S. Congress allocated more than US$42 million for relocation efforts. Most of the residents accepted buyout offers and moved to the nearby communities of Mount Carmel and Ashland. A few families opted to stay despite warnings from Pennsylvania officials.
In 1992, Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey invoked eminent domain on all properties in the borough, condemning all the buildings within. A subsequent legal effort by residents to have the decision reversed failed. In 2009, Governor Ed Rendell began the formal eviction of Centralia residents.
The Centralia mine fire extended into the town of Byrnesville, Pennsylvania and caused this town to also be abandoned.
Today
Very few homes remain standing in Centralia; most of the abandoned buildings have been demolished by the Columbia County Redevelopment Authority or nature. At a casual glance, the area now appears to be a field with many paved streets running through it. Some areas are being filled with new-growth forest. The remaining church in the borough, St. Mary’s, holds weekly services on Sunday and has not yet been directly affected by the fire.[citation needed] The town’s four cemeteries—including one on the hilltop that has smoke rising around and out of it—are maintained in good condition. There is also a notice board posted near Hammie Hill, about 500 yards from the cemetery, protesting the evictions and demanding former Governor Rendell intervene.
The only indications of the fire, which underlies some 400 acres (1.6 km2) spreading along four fronts, are low round metal steam vents in the south of the borough and several signs warning of underground fire, unstable ground, and carbon monoxide. Additional smoke and steam can be seen coming from an abandoned portion of Pennsylvania Route 61, the area just behind the hilltop cemetery, and other cracks in the ground scattered about the area. Route 61 was repaired several times until its final closing. The current route was a detour around the damaged portion during the repairs and became a permanent route in 1993; mounds of dirt were placed at both ends of the former route, effectively blocking the road. Pedestrian traffic is still possible due to a small opening about two feet wide at the north side of the road, but this is muddy and not accessible to the disabled. The underground fire is still burning and may continue to do so for 250 years.
Prior to its demolition in September 2007, the last remaining house on Locust Avenue was notable for the five chimney-like support buttresses along each of two opposite sides of the house, where the house was supported by a row of adjacent buildings before it was demolished. Another house with similar buttresses was visible from the northern side of the cemetery, just north of the burning, partially subsumed hillside.
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania did not renew the relocation contract at the end of 2005, and the fate of the remaining residents is uncertain.
In 2009, John Comarnisky and John Lokitis, Jr. were both evicted, in May and July respectively. In 2010, only five homes remain as state officials try to vacate the remaining residents and demolish what is left of the town. In May 2009, the remaining residents mounted another legal effort to reverse the 1992 eminent domain claim. In March 2011, a federal judge refused to issue an injunction that would have stopped the condemnation. In February 2012, the Commonwealth Court ruled that a declaration of taking could not be re-opened or set aside on the basis that the purpose for the condemnation no longer exists; seven people, including the Borough Council president, had filed suit claiming the condemnation was no longer needed because the underground fire had moved and the air quality in the borough was the same as that in Lancaster.
The Pottsville Republican & Herald reported in February 2011 that the Borough Council still has regular meetings. The news story reported that the town’s highest bill at the meeting reported on came from PPL at $92 and the town’s budget was “in the black”.
On August 28, 2011, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church celebrated 100 years of worship. This church is located on the north hill overlooking the town. It was allowed to stay because of its distance from the mine fire.
It is expected that many former residents will return in 2016 to open a time capsule buried in 1966 next to the veterans’ memorial.
All or part of the article above was taken from the Wikipedia article Centralia, Pennsylvania, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
The Danvers State Hospital, also known as the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, The Danvers Lunatic Asylum, and The Danvers State Insane Asylum, was a psychiatric hospital located in Danvers, Massachusetts.
It was built in 1874 and opened in 1878 under the supervision of prominent Boston architect Nathaniel Jeremiah Bradlee, on an isolated site in rural Massachusetts. It was a multi-acre, self-contained psychiatric hospital designed and built according to the Kirkbride Plan. It is rumored to have been the birthplace of the pre-frontal lobotomy.
History
Constructed at a cost of $1.5 million, with the estimated yearly per capita cost of patients being $3,000 the hospital originally consisted of two main center buildings, housing the administration, with four radiating wings. The administration building measured 90 by 60 feet (18 m), with a 130 feet (40 m) high tower. The kitchens, laundries, chapel, and dormitories for the attendants were in a connecting 180 by 60 feet (18 m) building in the rear. In the rear was the boiler house of 70 feet (21 m) square, with boilers 450 horsepower (340 kW), used for heating and ventilation. Middleton Pond supplied the hospital its water. On each side of the main building were the wings, for male and female patients respectively, connected by small square towers, with the exception of the last ones on each side, which are joined by octagonal towers. The former measured 10 feet (3.0 m) square, and were used to separate the buildings. The outermost wards were reserved for extreme patients. West side was male, east was female.
Over the years, newer buildings were constructed around the original Kirkbride, as well as alterations to the Kirkbride itself, such as a new gymnasium/auditorium on the area of the old kitchens and multiple solaria added onto the front of the wards.
Most of the buildings on campus were connected by a confusing labyrinth of underground tunnels, also constructed over the years. Many of the Commonwealth institutions for the developmentally delayed and the mentally ill at the time were designed with tunnel systems, to be self-sufficient in wintertime. There was a tunnel that ran from a steam/power generating plant (which still exists to provide service to the Hogan Regional Center) located at the bottom of the hill running up to the hospital, along with tunnels that connected the male and female nurses homes, the “Gray Gables”, Bonner Medical Building, machine shops, pump house, and a few others. The system of tunnels branched off like spokes from a central hub behind the Kirbride building (in the vicinity of the old gymnasium) leading to different wards of the hospital and emerging up into the basements. This hub was also an underground maintenance area of sorts. Some nicknamed it “The Wagon Wheel” due to its design. These older brick and cobblestone tunnels were used in the production of the movie Session 9. The original plan was designed to house 500 patients, with 100 more possible to accommodate in the attic. However, by the late 1930s and 1940s, over 2,000 patients were being housed, and overcrowding was severe. People were even held in the basements of the Kirkbride.
While the asylum was originally established to provide residential treatment and care to the mentally ill, its functions expanded to include a training program for nurses in 1889 and a pathological research laboratory in 1895. In the 1890s, Dr. Charles Page, the superintendent, declared mechanical restraint unnecessary and harmful in cases of mental illness. By the 1920s the hospital was operating school clinics to help determine mental deficiency in children. Reports were made that various, and inhumane shock therapies, lobotomies, drugs, and straitjackets were being used to keep the crowded hospital under control. This sparked controversy. During the 1960s as a result of increased emphasis on alternative methods of treatment, deinstitutionalization, and community-based mental health care, the inpatient population started to decrease. On June 24, 1992, the hospital closed. After abandonment, the wards and buildings were left to decay and rot for many years until the demolition.
Demolition and Present State
In December 2005, the property was sold to Avalon Bay Development, an apartment company. A lawsuit was filed to stave off the demolition of the hospital, including the Kirkbride building, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. However, this ultimately did not stop the process, and to some public outcry, demolition of most of the buildings began in January 2006, with the intent to build 497 apartments on the 77-acre (310,000 m2) site. The people who filed the lawsuit criticized how the case was handled by the courts.
By June 2006, all of the Danvers State Hospital buildings that were marked for demolition had been torn down, including all of the unused buildings and old homes on the lower grounds and all of the buildings on the hill. Despite the anger of many, the historic Kirkbride was also demolished, with only the outermost brick shell of the administration area (along with the G and D wards on each side) being propped up during demolition and construction while an entirely new structure was built behind and inside of it, leaving the historic Danvers Reservoir and the original brick shell. A replica of the original tower/steeple on the Kirkbride was built to duplicate what was removed around 1970 due to structural issues. (The first picture illustrates the original tower in 1893, the second and third pictures illustrate the new replica in 2006 and 7, and the fourth picture illustrates the short, fat, rebuilt one from 1970.) the Avalon Bay predicted that they would have properties available for rent/sale by Fall 2007.
However, on April 7, 2007, four of the apartment complex buildings and four of Avalon bay’s construction trailers burned down in a large, mysterious fire visible from Boston, some seventeen miles (27 km) away. The mysterious conflagration was confined mostly to the buildings under construction on the eastern end, with damage to the remaining Kirkbride spires from catching fire due to excessive heat. An investigation was started concerning the cause of the mysterious fire. Avalon Bay provided a live webcam of the construction at the old site of the hospital at their website; however, the pictures cut out at approximately 2:03 AM the night of the fire, and the webcam was disabled, possibly due to the fire.
The underground tunnel leading up from the power plant still exists, blocked off at the top of the hill, however it is uncertain whether the tunnel network on top of the hill was actually removed or not during demolition and rebuilding.
While the initial outward appearance of the hospital’s irreplaceable Kirkbride complex was preserved as far as the center of the old building is concerned, it is widely believed that the entire Kirkbride could have been further restored to some extent rather than demolished and replaced with the modern and comparatively cheap construction inside of it. Traverse City State Hospital in Michigan is an example of a successful similar renovation. The only thing left of the asylum is the cemeteries, some tunnels which are blocked off, and the brick shell of the administration and the D and G wings.
In popular culture
- The hospital was the setting for the 2001 horror film, Session 9. The asylum was also featured in the 1958 film Home Before Dark.
- In the game Painkiller, one of the levels, called Asylum, is based on the central administration section. While the outside is a faithful reproduction, the inside is not.
- In the book Project 17 by Laurie Faria Stolarz, the plot involves six teens breaking into Danvers, to investigate the allegedly haunted asylum.
- In the tabletop RPG Mage: The Awakening, the hospital’s reflection in the World of Darkness was administrated by soul-stealing Tremere vampires, who fed upon their patients.
- “The Danvers State” is a song by Portland artist Archeology which appears on the band’s second E.P. The Wildwood Hymns.
- The Hospital is commonly used as a theme and icon in the animation and video art of Boston artist Fluffy Conti.
- The Danvers State Hospital is largely believed to have served as inspiration for the infamous Arkham sanatorium from H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep”. (Lovecraft’s Arkham, in turn, is the inspiration for Arkham Asylum, a psychiatric hospital within the Batman universe.) It is referenced by name in the short story, “Pickman’s Model.”
External links
- Danvers State Insane Asylum — information, news and preservation efforts
- O.T.I.S.(Odd Things I’ve Seen): A Firsthand Account of Danvers State Hospital nee Danvers Avalon Apartments
- Danvers State Hospital Digital Archive, An User Contributed Educational Site
- http://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/buildings/danvers/
- Danvers State Hospital – Asylum Projects
All or part of the article above was taken from the Wikipedia article Danvers State Hospital, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
The Dybbuk Box (or Dibbuk Box) is the commonly used name of a wine cabinet which is said to be haunted by a dybbuk, a spirit from Jewish folklore. The box achieved recognition after it was auctioned on eBay with an accompanying horror story.
The term “Dibbuk Box” was first used to describe the subject of an original story by Kevin Mannis which he posted as an eBay auction listing. Mannis, a writer and creative professional by trade, owned a small antiques and furniture refinishing business in Portland, Oregon at the time. According to Mannis’ story, he purportedly bought the Box at an estate sale in 2001. It had belonged to a German Holocaust survivor named Havela, who had escaped to Spain and purchased it there before emigrating to the United States. Havela’s granddaughter told Mannis that the Box had been kept in her grandmother’s sewing room and was never opened because a dybbuk—an evil spirit from Jewish folklore—was said to live inside it. He offered to give the box back to her, but she became upset and refused to take it.
On opening the box, Mannis found that it contained two 1920s pennies, a lock of blonde hair bound with cord, a lock of black/brown hair bound with cord, a small statue engraved with the Hebrew word “Shalom”, a small, golden wine goblet, one dried rose bud, and a single candle holder with four octopus-shaped legs.
Numerous owners of the box have reported that strange phenomena accompany it. In his story, Mannis claimed he experienced a series of horrific nightmares shared with other people while they were in possession of the box. His mother suffered a stroke on the same day he gave her the box as a birthday present—October 28. Every owner of the Box has reported that smells of cat urine or jasmine flowers and nightmares involving an old hag accompany the Box. Iosif Neitzke, a Missouri student at Truman State University in Kirksville Missouri and the last person to auction the box on eBay, claimed that the box caused lights to burn out in his house and his hair to fall out. Haxton had been following Neitzke’s blogs regarding the box from day one and when he was ready to be rid of the Dybbuk Box Neitzke sold it to Jason Haxton, Director of the Museum of Osteopathic Medicine in Kirksville, Missouri. Haxton wrote The Dibbuk Box, and claimed that he subsequently developed strange health problems, including hives, coughing up blood, and “head-to-toe welts”. Haxton consulted with Rabbis (Jewish religious leaders) to try to figure out a way to seal the dybbuk in the box again. Apparently successful, he took the freshly resealed box and hid it at a secret location, which he will not reveal.
Skeptic Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths’ College, told an interviewer he believed that the Box’s owners were “already primed to be looking out for bad stuff. If you believe you have been cursed, then inevitably you explain the bad stuff that happens in terms of what you perceive to be the cause. Put it like this: I would be happy to own this object.”
Design
The cabinet has the Shema carved into the side of it. Its dimensions are 12.5″ × 7.5″ × 16.25″.
In popular culture
- The box inspired a British performance tour, The Thirteenth Box, a cave tour led by Jez Starr in Cheddar Gorge, in which audience members claimed to have taken a picture of the Dybbuk.
- The box is the subject of a 2012 Sam Raimi film by Ghost House Pictures, entitled The Possession, starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Kyra Sedgwick and Natasha Calis and directed by Ole Bornedal. The script was written by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White and was based on an Los Angeles Times article by Leslie Gornstein, which told the story of the Dybbuk box after the first eBay auction. Mannis and Haxton served as production consultants.
- The box’s story has been featured on the Mysterious Universe podcast.
- The box’s story has been covered in an episode of Syfy’s Paranormal Witness.
- A Portland radio show entitled “The Daria, Mitch and Ted Show” found out about the story via the film The Possession. The program told the stories from previous owners who attempted to sell the box to exorcists. Immediately after that, odd things began happening in the studio.
References
^ Kevin Mannis (September 2, 2009). “The Dibbuk Box, A.K.A. The Haunted Jewish Wine Cabinet”. Yahoo. Retrieved July 29, 2012.
^ “TONIGHT (7-21) on Paranormal Underground Radio We Talk About the Haunted Dibbuk Box”. Paranormal Underground. July 21, 2011. Retrieved July 29, 2012.
^ Max Gross (February 13, 2004). “A Box Full of Bad Luck: Haunted Wine Cabinet Goes to Highest Bidder”. The Forward.
^ Leslie Gornstein (July 25, 2004). “A jinx in a box?; Maybe mischievous spirits do haunt this Jewish scroll cabinet, or maybe it’s just another Web-spawned legend run wild.”. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 31, 2010.
^ Collis, Clark. “Little Box of Horrors.” Entertainment Weekly, August 3, 2012, pp. 50-55.
^ “Paranormal Witness Episode “Dybbuk Box””. SYFY.
^ “Mystery of possessed box at caves”. Cheddar Valley Gazette. June 10, 2010.
^ “Demon ‘haunts show audience member'”. Bridgwater Times. October 21, 2010.
^ “Magician’s shock after demon ‘haunts carer’ following show”. Cheddar Valley Gazette. October 21, 2010.
^ CATHY DUNKLEY and NICOLE LaPORTE (October 26, 2004). “Horror unit will unlock new ‘Box'”. Daily Variety.
^ Nicole LaPorte (October 30, 2006). “Brand New World for Scribes”. Variety.
^ “Episode 209 Mysterious Universe”.
^ “Episode 524 Mysterious Universe”.
^ Syfy’s Paranormal Witness Returns in August Dread Central
External links
Dybbuk Box website
Mirror of eBay auction
All or part of the article above was taken from the Wikipedia article Dybbuk Box, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Downtown
– A man was driving down a road at a very high speed and crashed into a brick wall. At night time, you can hear squealing tires, and a man saying, “Merde!” (French curse word) before hearing a crash.
The Belchen Tunnel is a motorway tunnel in Switzerland, and forms part of the A2 motorway from Basel to Chiasso. It is 3.2 km long, and lies in the northern (slightly northwestern) part of Switzerland. It links Eptingen in the canton of Basel-Country with Hägendorf in the Canton of Solothurn. The tunnel was built in the mid-1960s. It was completely renovated in 2003.
The “white woman” – an urban legend
January 1981, a modern myth circulated, dealing with a “white woman” (“weisse Frau”) of the Bölchentunnel (“Bölchen” is local dialect for “Belchen”). This phenomena is a paranormal event and mystery that has never been solved. Shaped as an old white-clothed hitchhiking woman, a ghost (though not initially recognized as such) appears out of nowhere in front of the drivers and sometimes even speaks to them.
The first known Belchen ghost was actually male. The first written credentials about the phenomena (dated June 1980) are about a male hitchhiker who was picked up but, despite the high speed, after a while no longer sat in the backseat.
Towards the end of that year, the “white woman” began appearing in or outside the tunnel. On January 6, 1981, the tabloid Blick wrote about the sightings, followed by other media also adopting the story. Basel Police received many phone calls, dozens of which had to be logged.
The “Bölchengespenst” (Bölchen ghost) became a popular subject for 1981’s Shrove Tuesday carnival. Even the musicians of the Oberbaselbieter Ländlerkapelle treated the legend. Later, the discussion cooled down – until the 1983 edition of the book Baselbieter Sagen reported further strange sightings of the white woman. There were two female jurists who picked up an inconspicuously dressed, clumsy, pale, middle-aged woman in Eptingen. When later asked if she felt better, she answered “No, unfortunately not. I am not well at all (or “It isn’t going [at all] well (for me)” from the German “Es geht (mir) [gar] nicht gut.”). Something really awful is going to happen, something very dreadful!” (Swiss-German: “Nei, leider nid. Es goht gar nid guet. Es passiert öppis Schrecklichs, öppis ganz Furchtbars!”) When the two jurists next looked at the backseat, the woman had disappeared.
Other variations
Such visitations don’t only happen inside or around tunnels. A re-edited edition of the Baselbieter Sagen mentions similar cases at other Basel places: “the Heidegg castle’s lady,” “the maiden on the goat,” and “the grey woman in Zunzgen.” In Läufelfingen, the woman wears a green loden coat, in the Canton of Bern, a girl in a short leather jacket appears. In the area of Basel, as with the case in Tenniken, a man wearing black is seen. The man prophesizes an earthquake and a hard winter before disappearing. The mysterious hitchhikers can even disappear if the car has only front doors and no back doors.
A 1981 article in the magazine Schweizer Volkskunde describes analogous visitations. According to it, such “modern ghosts of the road” were seen in other Swiss Cantons and tunnels, such as the Luzernerland area and in Toggenburg.
External links
– (German) Belchen Tunnel
– (German) «Plötzlich war die Frau weg, fort, einfach nicht mehr da», Volksstimme, 25 January 2001
Photo Credit: BelchenTunnel.ch
All or part of the article above was taken from the Wikipedia article Belchen Tunnel, licensed under CC-BY-SA.