| SPECIAL MAILING OF THE NEWSLETTER!
THE "ALL GHOST STORIES" ISSUE / 18 NOVEMBER 2010 Let me start off this issue of the newsletter by wishing all of our readers a very Happy Thanksgiving! I don't know about you, but this has always been one of my favorite holidays and I'm looking forward to enjoying it again this year. This issue of the newsletter is sort of a "thank you" to all of the readers who stick with us throughout the year as we advertise books, tours and events with the newsletter. This is a different kind of newsletter with three ghost articles / stories for you to enjoy. I'll keep the reminders and ads very short, so here they are: * Book Signing with Troy Taylor: For those of you in the Chicago / Northern Illinois area, I hope that you'll consider coming out to see me tomorrow night (Friday, November 19) at the Frugal Muse bookstore in South Side Darien, Illinois. The signing starts at 7PM and the store's address is at 7511 Lemont Road in Darien. Should be a fun evening! * New Overnights: We have added several new overnights to the schedule for 2011, including another Lemp Mansion overnight (April 10) and another overnight at the Lincoln Theater (Friday, May 13) for those who missed out on the now sold-out events. And we have also added a Night at Rolling Hills Asylum to the schedule for July. Click Here for Info on all of our Ghost Hunts! And that's it, no more ads for this issue. We'll be back in early December with one of our special annual incentives for newsletter subscribers ONLY! Have a great holiday!
Troy Taylor | WHAT'S LURKING IN THE HISTORY OF YOUR HOUSE?
In his acclaimed book, THE GHOST HUNTER'S GUIDEBOOK, author Troy Taylor goes in-depth on the methods of discovering the history of a possibly haunted house. In this special article, written just for the newsletter, Troy presents the in's and out's of finding out just what kind of history is lingering in your home! |  | Every house has a history, there’s no doubt about that. And when it comes to hunting down ghosts in a haunted houses, there is no better way to do that than by its history. Hauntings are created by the events of the past. Without understanding history, we cannot begin to understand a haunting and we certainly cannot begin to prove that ghosts truly exist. You can believe that a house is haunted, but it takes history to be able to tell us why. What occurred to make this place become haunted? And who is it that haunts it? Unfortunately, although many ghost hunters are hard-pressed to accept it, these are answers that no amount of technology or sophisticated gadgets can provide. Technology has its uses but most ghost hunters ignore the skills they really need in favor of gadgets that have yet to provide any convincing evidence of the paranormal. Unless a ghost is somehow captured and tested in a laboratory setting, technology is never going to prove that ghosts exist. The only way we can do that is through history. In other words, find a house whose current occupants allege it to be haunted. Then contact past owners of the house. In a perfect situation, they will tell you the exact same things were happening during their tenure in the house that the current owners claim -- even though these people have never met, and have not compared stories. Such claims are not easy to dismiss. But how do we find out the history of a house? As mentioned, every house has one. Even new houses might have a story to tell. You can ask the family in the movie “Poltergeist”, who bought a new home that was built on top of a cemetery. Had they checked into the history of the location, they might have discovered that the developer had failed to re-locate the graves as he promised. They would have spared themselves a lot of grief – but we would have missed out on an entertaining film! Or you can ask a couple who moved into a rundown old house in Oklahoma, which once belonged to Chicago mobster Murray “The Camel” Humphreys, a top man in the Capone gang. The house contained secret rooms and human remains were later found on the grounds. I’m sure they wish they would have checked into the past owners of the house before they moved in! Actually, it’s not hard to check on a home’s physical pedigree. An independent inspection will provide a lot about the house’s current shape and a Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) report will provide a history of any insurance claims that have been filed on the place. But to check on the home’s hidden history and whether the place is haunted or some grisly event took place there, you have to become something of a detective, talking to people and searching for shreds of evidence that won’t be easily found. You can’t always count on real estate agents to tell you if the place is infested with spooks or that say, three previous owners committed suicide within its walls. While some states compel agents to disclose such information, others make it illegal to tell potential buyers what happened in what have been referred to as “stigmatized properties.” What constitutes a “stigma” varies, as well. Some states don’t consider a psychological stigma like a murder or haunting to be sinister enough to affect the value of the home since it does not affect its physical nature. For a ghost hunter, there are many things you can do to try and help a possible client to track down the reason why his house might be filled with things that go bump in the night. It’s easy to start your investigation by talking to the neighbors and asking them what they know or what they might have heard. Then you can expand the search by talking to former owners and tenants and perhaps even their descendants. You can compile a chronological list of past owners from deeds on file at the county courthouse, city directories and maps. If there are gaps in the deeds or listings, look for a mortgage or will that transferred the property from one person to another. Once you track down the names, start looking for newspaper articles and information at the local library. You just might uncover a death or scandal that could explain why strange things are happening in the house. Cemetery records, genealogy files and websites like the Social Security Death Index (ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com) are good sources for death dates that will help to track down obituaries in the newspaper. Hopefully, all of this information will be of use to you and even if only a small part of it assists you in your hunt for the history of house, then it has served some purpose. Even if you follow it closely, though, there is no guarantee that you will not run into a dead end, but I have had good luck with it and hope that you will also. If the ghost in the house can be connected to a person who once lived there, especially by details that were not known before researching the house, then you have a pretty powerful case and excellent evidence of life after death. And the only "proof" of a ghost that you're ever likely to get. *********************************************************************** | LINGERING SPIRITS OF THE TRIANGLE FACTORY FIRE BY RENE KRUSE The Triangle Shirtwaist factory was a typical sweatshop, just like any of the hundreds of other sweatshops on the island of Manhattan in the early 1900s - that is, until it caught fire. What happened during that fire so shocked the nation that it literally changed history for the safety of millions of industrial workers and likely saved thousands of lives. |  | The Asch building, on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, was a rather nondescript ten-story building. The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, rented or subcontracted out the lower seven floors of the building to various other similar enterprises. They saved the eighth, ninth and tenth floors for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory, which they operated to make ladies blouses, then known as shirtwaists. One unique aspect of this particular building was that it was constructed to be “fireproof.” History has shown us so many times, that this kind of arrogance has proven to be deadly. Fireproof buildings didn’t need the usual precautions and devices. The irony in this case was that the factory building’s being considered fireproof led directly to the death of one 148 people. After that terrible fire was extinguished, the building did indeed seem to have been fireproof. Even inside, the floors and walls were left virtually intact. There was little visual evidence of the conflagration in the outward appearance of the structure and none of the floors below the eighth were damaged by the fire. The only signs of what had happened that day were the piles of broken bodies on the pavement below and the charred remains of people and burned stock and machinery later found on the upper three floors. Employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company were not allowed to leave the building by the main doors. At the end of the work day they were required to go to the rear exit door, which was kept locked during the hours of operation for fear of theft. Here, the employees were routinely searched before leaving, lest they try to steal something. This situation created a terrific bottleneck during the fire and cut off one of the few means of escape. As the structure was deemed fireproof, it had only a single, flimsy fire escape. There had already been four fires reported in this particular factory and the fire department had determined it to be unsafe because of insufficient fire escapes. However, because there were no meaningful legal requirements it was difficult, if not impossible to enforce any changes that should have been made. Also, as the previous fires were rapidly extinguished and no one was killed, the factory’s routines remained unchanged. March 25, 1911 was a Saturday and a fine day according to all accounts. Most sweatshop workers in the city were released by lunchtime for their Saturday half day-off, including those who worked on the lower seven floors of the Asch Building. However, the owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who were known to be harsh employers, kept most of their employees hard at work until 5:00 p.m. Most of the factory employees, nearly five hundred women and one hundred or so men, were at work that day. Most of the women were very young, aged sixteen to 23, and very few of them spoke English. They were largely Italian, German, Russian and Hungarian immigrants and many of them were the primary wage earners for their families. The men employed there worked mostly in the capacity of office workers and management. Around 4:40 p.m., just ten minutes before the end of the workday, cries of “fire!” rang out on the eighth floor. No one ever learned exactly how the fire started but most speculated that it was caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette or match. The fabric debris had not been removed for quite some time and finished clothing was hung on overhead lines so there was ample fuel everywhere. Within a few minutes, flames were pouring from windows of the top three floors of the Asch building. Four fire alarms were sounded immediately but the fire was already so intense that the first five women to jump to their deaths did so before even the first fire truck had arrived. Of the two elevators in the building, only one was in working order. A few minutes after the fire began, the only stairwell was full of flames and smoke, making it impossible to flee using that route. Some survivors reported that the elevator only made one trip down that afternoon but Thomas Gregory, an elevator operator from another building who was on his way home, ran into the building and said he made three more trips with the elevator before it broke down. He described leaving masses of terrified, panic-stricken people trying to fight their way onto the elevator but was only able to take fifteen or so people on each trip. Even though the elevator was no longer operating, the shaft doors were forced open and several people attempted to escape by sliding down the elevator cables. At least two people were successful in their attempt. A young woman, later pulled from the shaft alive, said she passed out on her way down the cables and had no memory of what happened next but she believed that she survived because she landed on several of the dead bodies of her fellow workers, which cushioned her fall. Another man reported using the same cables to flee. Unfortunately, as he slid down, the body of a young woman falling from above, knocked him from the cables and he fell the final few floors. After the fire, 25 bodies were pulled from the bottom of the elevator shaft, many of whom had simply jumped to their deaths to escape the flames. Both Harris and Blanck, the building’s owners, were in the building when the fire started, along with Blanck’s children and their nanny. All escaped by making their way to the roof, a means of escape that was not known to most of the factory workers. The doors to the roof were kept locked on all but the top floor. About two hundred workers did eventually make their way to the roof, most of them from the tenth floor. The New York University Law School building was located just across a small courtyard but was one story higher. As the fire raged, several law students led by Charles Kremer and Elias Kanter rushed to the aid of the victims. They tied two short ladders together so that the victims could climb to the roof of their building. Kremer climbed down onto the lower roof to help them up the ladder, and in this way they were able to save one hundred and fifty men, women and girls. Kremer then made his way down into the tenth floor to look for more survivors. He saw only one young girl, her hair ablaze. She ran toward him screaming and then fainted in his arms. He put out her burning hair then carried her to safety, believing there to be no one else surviving left behind on that floor. Meanwhile, at the other end of the roof, about fifty people had gathered and were fighting to scale the five feet to the roof of the adjoining building. Several of the law students reported seeing men kicking and biting the women and girls, knocking them out of the way as they escaped to safety. After the fire department arrived, many attempts were made to save trapped or falling victims. Unfortunately, their ladders only reached a little above the sixth floor. Several people tried to jump to the ladders but none were able to catch hold and all fell to their deaths. Safety nets were also employed but to little or no avail. The great height was just too much and many of the nets split or were shredded as bodies fell through them, crashing to the pavement. In one case, a young girl was caught in a net but three others who jumped just after, landed on her and all four toppled onto the ground, dead. A few bystanders tried to stretch blankets or tarps but the results were nearly all the same. The number of people saved in this manner could be counted on one hand. One woman fell with such force that she ripped through a safety net and crashed through the thick glass vault in the sidewalk, finally coming to rest in the basement of the building. Several rescue workers were injured when falling bodies struck them. People were falling faster than the firefighters could get into position to try to catch them. The firefighters' rescue efforts were further hindered by the growing number of corpses strewn about the sidewalks, making it difficult for them to move the safety nets. The bodies were left lying where they fell until later that evening, as the firefighters were busy fighting the fire. It was believed none of those who had fallen could still be alive. A few hours later, however, a young woman was pulled from a pile of bodies, still breathing. A great cheer arose as she was loaded into an ambulance. Sadly, though, she died a few minutes later. As the upper floors of the building burned, a crowd of thousands, gathering in the streets below bore witness to the carnage that was unfolding before them. They screamed in horror as they watched, helpless. Many eyewitness reports of the tragic deaths of the people who fell to their deaths from the windows of the Washington Place and Greene Street sides soon followed. Some jumped, some were thrown or pushed and others were forced out by the panic-stricken crowds shoving their way toward the windows. A majority of those who fell did so with burning clothing and hair. Some continued to burn as they lay on the sidewalk until they were extinguished by the water dripping down from the fire hoses, their blackened bodies left lying there until late in the evening. Five young women on the Greene Street side of the building climbed out onto the windowsill, wrapped their arms around each other and jumped together. They crashed through the sidewalk cover into the basement, their clothes and hair burning as they fell. Another girl leaped very far out but her dress got tangled up in some wires and she was left suspended high above as the crowd watched, unable to help. Eventually, her dress burned through and she fell to her death. A man on the same side was seen from an adjacent building, running from window to window picking up women and throwing them out the windows. Eventually, when no other women were left, he himself climbed onto the ledge, paused a moment then jumped. It was never known if he believed that there would be nets to catch them or if he was trying to shorten their suffering. | A young girl of about thirteen was seen hanging by her fingertips from a ninth-floor windowsill for a few minutes. Then the fire reached her fingers and she fell into a waiting net, only to be crushed by two other women who fell immediately after her, adding all three to the death list. Frank Fingerman, an employee from a nearby business, reported, “As I ran past, I saw a boy and a girl standing together at a Greene Street window. He was holding her, and she seemed to be trying to jump. They were still there when I came back from the firebox (after calling in the fire alarm). As the smoke began to come out of the window above them the boy let the girl go, and she jumped. He followed her before she struck the ground. Four more people came out of the same window immediately and jumped.” Some of the girls who jumped from the Washington Place side crashed through the vault light in the sidewalk. As women continued to fall or jump from the same window, their bodies eventually created a hole nearly five feet in diameter. Later in the evening, firefighters pulled several partially nude and burned bodies from this hole. | (Top) Police officers examine the bodies of those who jumped or fell from the upper windows of the building. (Below) Some of the bodies hit the street with such force that they punched through the pavement to basements and sewers below. | Another pair of girls climbed out of a window on the ninth floor, overlooking Greene Street. The older of the two seemed calm and composed as she tried to subdue the younger girl as she “shrieked and twisted with fright.” As the crowd called to them not to jump, the older girl wrapped her arms around her and pulled her back toward the building. The younger girl, in her panic, twisted free, took a few steps away and then she jumped. The older girl remained standing on the ledge until the flames came so close that her hair was scorched. She looked skyward, placed her arms to her sides, and jumped straight down, feet first. Her name was Bertha Weintrout and she was the girl who was later found alive, if only for a few minutes, buried amid a pile of corpses on the sidewalk. Six girls, after getting to a window on the ninth floor made their way out onto an eight-inch-wide ledge that ran the length of the building. Slowly, they edged their way along this ledge, more than one hundred feet above the ground, toward a swinging electric cable. When all had arrived, they grabbed the cable simultaneously in an attempt to swing to the safety of the adjacent building. The cable snapped as they swung out and all six perished below. A few windows down, on the same floor, a man and a woman appeared on the sill. The man kissed, then hugged the woman, threw her to the street and jumped himself. Both were killed. Just around the corner, from another window, a young girl, a man and a woman, and two other women with their arms wrapped around each other leaped to the ground together. The young girl was found alive after her fall and was rushed to the hospital where she died upon arrival. A small group of men tried to make a human bridge between the burning building and the window of another building. They were successful in saving a number of women but eventually the weight of the women became too great and the bridge broke, the center man tumbling to the ground with a broken back. The fire was extinguished within an hour and by 7:00 p.m., less than two hours after it started, firefighters were able to force their way up the stairs and into the burned floors. They reported that, “50 roasted bodies were found on the ninth floor alone.” The charred bodies of nineteen victims were found piled against locked doors and 25 more were found huddled together in a cloakroom. Each body, as it was found, was carefully lifted from the burned surroundings, wrapped in cloth and hoisted to the ground using a pulley system. They were then taken to one of a hundred wooden coffins lining the street. The bodies were then moved to the morgue at Bellevue Hospital on the Charities Pier morgue. | The police estimated that as many as 200,000 people; devastated family and friends, as well as the morbidly curious public, entered the makeshift morgue at the pier and filed past the over one hundred wooden coffins containing bodies that had been recovered. They walked past the bodies that were at least partially recognizable in the hope of finding a lost loved one. Tens of thousands were turned away by the police in an attempt to keep more of the general public away. Over forty human forms too badly burned to be recognizable, were covered with a white canvas tarp with the hope that they might be identified through trinkets, jewelry or articles of clothing. | The bodies of the Triangle Fire victims on display at the morgue. | Stories of unbelievable anguish were published in newspapers across the county. A young girl was identified by a family heirloom signet ring found clinging to the charred flesh of a badly burned body. A young woman screamed as she collapsed after identifying her fiancé by his ring, having become engaged only the night before. She asked if a watch had been found with his body. When she was given the watch, she opened it and “gazed upon her own portrait.” A man, having waited in line for over five hours, identified his daughters by their clothing. After collapsing with grief, he attempted to kill himself on the spot. He was restrained by police until he calmed down enough to continue looking for his wife, also lost in the fire. A man with a fresh burn on his cheek, identified his brother. He told the police that he and his brother had fought the fire, standing side by side, with buckets of water. A man who had barely escaped with his own life identified his fiancée by her engagement ring. In her hand, she still clutched her handbag, her weekly wages of $3 remained inside, intact. A sobbing brother stumbled away from the mangled bodies of his two sisters left propped up in their coffins to search for their mother. The fire took his entire family. As a growing number of people became hysterical or suicidal, a makeshift hospital was set up at the pier to deal with this unexpected problem. Doctors and nurses from Bellevue Hospital worked for days trying to help keep these grieving family members from being added to the list of lives stolen by the fire. Thirty-one victims remained unidentified after the last of the survivors claimed their family and friends. The Hebrew Free Burial Association paid for the burial of 23 of these victims in a special section of Mount Richmond Cemetery. The remaining eight bodies were interred in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. As the blaze began, the only safety measures within the Asch Building available to those still inside were 27 buckets of water and one fire escape that collapsed almost immediately. Most of the exits were locked and those that weren’t, opened inward so they remained closed under the crush of people pushing toward the doors. It was not the 95 charred bodies found inside the building that so outraged the public, but rather the heaps of bodies along the sidewalk and rows of mostly young girls laying dead in the street. By the end, 53 people had jumped, fallen or were pushed from the upper floors and thousands of people were there to witness each one of them fall and strike the pavement. The average age of those killed in the fire was nineteen. The public outrage was carried like a wave across the country as reports and pictures of the tragedy appeared in newspapers everywhere. The resulting public pressure proved to be too much to overcome and dramatic changes were in store for the existing fire codes and their enforcement in the workplace. The New York State Legislature formed the “Factory Commission” in 1911, which developed many requirements linked directly back to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire such as all exit doors must be left unlocked during operating hours and sprinklers were to be installed if a factory employed more than 25 people. The memories of the young women who perished in that terrible fire resulted in a major change in the way many people thought about protecting workers. Prior to the fire, the government left businesses alone regarding the safety of their workers. Afterwards, the government had little choice but to begin instituting sweeping safety laws that changed history for American workers. In the end, no one was held accountable for the Triangle deaths. In December of 1911, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the Asch Building owners and Triangle Shirtwaist Company owners were charged and tried for manslaughter. Despite a mob of people outside the courthouse chanting “Murderers! Murderers!” the two were acquitted of all charges by the jury after only two hours of deliberation. Twenty-three individual civil suits for damages against the company were settled for an average of $75 per life lost. Blanck and Isaac completed their association with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory by filing an insurance claim in excess of their losses, garnering them a profit from the fire of more than $60,000 -- a hefty sum in 1911. Blanck continued on in the clothing manufacturing business. He opened another factory on Fifth Avenue. In 1913, just two years after the Triangle fire, he was arrested for locking the exit door in his factory during working hours. He was fined $20. The Asch Building still stands at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street, but its name has been changed to the Brown Building. No longer are the floors of that building home to sweatshops employing poor and desperate immigrant women and girls, overworked and underpaid. Today, the Brown Building is full of young university science students as it has become a part of the New York University as a science lab -- the same university that was located next door and provided a means of escape to nearly one hundred and fifty people fleeing the fire with the aid of many of the students. On the corner of the building a plaque has been placed, commemorating the tragic events that took place on that site on March 25, 1911, and the lives lost that day. The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire continues as a turning point in United States history. There are other reminders of the fire for those who pay close enough attention. Even though the use of the building and the occupants have changed dramatically, bits and pieces of its history still linger, many of these believed to be supernatural. It is not uncommon for the smell of smoke to waft through the halls of the upper floors and more than once fire warnings have passed through the building. On occasion, people have reported a different kind of odor accompanying the smell of smoke. This odor can only be described as that of burning flesh -- then the odors simply disappear as quickly as they began. Often, doors that are supposed to be locked are found unlocked, sometimes within minutes of being locked! Could it be that the spirit of someone lost in the fire is trying to keep the current occupants from meeting the same tragic fate by being trapped behind a locked door in an emergency? A few people over the years have described a most peculiar experience. While sitting at a desk or workstation they have seen, out of the corner of their eye, something large flutter downward past their window. Upon going to the window to look down and see what it was, there is nothing there. The most striking ghostly experience was related by “Susan” (not her real name), a secretary who worked in the building for many years. She explained that she had been working later than usual one evening and by the time she left to go home, most of the other employees and students had already left. As she walked out of the building, she noticed a young woman walk past her with a slight stagger and a dazed look on her face. She was very dirty and her hair and clothes appeared to be singed or burned. Susan called to her to see if she needed help but the young woman didn’t respond; she just kept walking and turned the corner. Susan, thinking that the woman might be injured or in trouble, ran after her but upon turning the corner, she was met by an empty sidewalk. The young woman had simply vanished. We will never know for sure if these occurrences are directly related to the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. However, it does appear that the most important thing is that we never forget what happened there, nor the lessons learned. We may even get a little reminder now and then --- just to make sure. *********************************************************************** | PARANORMAL CLASSICS FROM MICHAEL WINKLE
This is the latest installment of a feature that we have recently added to the newsletter. In each issue, Michael Winkle will be uncovering a new, little known supernatural, paranormal or just plain weird feature from the annals of the unknown. |  | Raptors of the Old West Category: Cryptozoology From: Rickard, p. 8, and Ament, pp. 34-39 Where: Outside Pagosa Springs, Colorado, and near Chama, New Mexico, thirty miles southeast When: 1935, 1937, and 1978 Who: Pagosa Springs resident Myrtle Snow How close to source: Ms. Snow sent her account to Denver, Colorado’s Empire Magazine, which published her letter in its August 22, 1982 edition. Phenomena: In May of 1935, when she was three years old, Myrtle Snow saw five “baby dinosaurs” near Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We are not told the precise circumstances – how small the “babies” were, what they looked like, or if there were any adult witnesses. Several months later, however, a farmer named John Martinez began losing sheep to an unknown predator. Eventually he shot the culprit, and what a culprit it was! "My grandfather took us to see it the next morning,” writes Ms. Snow. “It was about seven feet tall, was grey, had a head like a snake, short front legs with claws that resembled chicken feet, large stout back legs and a long tail." Two years later, according to Ms. Snow, she saw another such creature in a cave. Beyond the fact it was dark green, we are again given no details – whether it was alive or dead, who was with her, etc. One can easily dismiss these recollections from the ages of three and five, when the boundaries between reality and imagination are somewhat plastic, but Ms. Snow had one more encounter in the same general area as an adult: "On Oct. 23, 1978, as I was returning from Chama, NM, about 7:30 pm, in a driving rain, I saw another one going through the field towards the place where I had seen the one in 1937." (Chama is just across the New Mexico border from Pagosa Springs). Oddities: The idea that something resembling Velociraptors straight out of Jurassic Park may be loose in the American West is very odd – and disturbing. Ending: Unfortunately little more is known about the witness (except that she is presumably the Myrtle Snow of Pagosa Springs who died January 25, 2006, age 73, according to my online people search), but that is not the end of western dinosaur stories. Legend: In 1993 Texas UFO researcher Jimmy Ward published an article called “The Mountain Boomer,” a collection of folktales from the Big Bend National Park area of Texas (almost as far west as Pagosa Springs but much further south). A “Mountain Boomer” was supposedly a “giant lizard that walked on its hind legs and whose voice sounded like the roll of distant thunder.” The creatures were usually greenish or brownish, standing five or six feet tall, their short forelegs held like arms. While hunting down Boomer stories, Ward met up with a Connecticut family who spotted one while en route to California. They agreed that it was the very image of the nasty Dromaeosaurs of Jurassic Park fame. So there do seem to be legends of dinosaur-like reptiles in the American west. (One should point out that the eastern collared lizard is sometimes called a mountain boomer, and that it can run on its hind legs when threatened.) Explanation: Cryptozoologist Chad Arment suggests that some “baby dinosaur” stories might be caused by people seeing species of lizards that can run (momentarily) on their hind legs, like the real mountain boomer or the South American basilisk (presumably escaped pets). How to explain reptiles standing six or more feet tall, though? Although skeptical of the Texas and Colorado stories, Arment mentions that: “Some friends of mine in the reptile trade had done business a few years ago with an individual who had collected some Colorado species and had offered to catch some ‘river dinos’ for them.” (Arment, p. 39) Arment’s friends didn’t have the money, but yes, the description given of a Colorado “river dino” was of a bipedal, dinosaur-ish reptile. Comments: When I was a dinosaur-crazed kid, I hoped that remnants of the great reptiles survived somewhere, hidden from men, maybe in Asia, Africa, or South America. Perhaps I don’t have to travel so far to find a “lost world.” But I might regret finding it, if I did. Arment, Chad, “Dinos in the U.S.A.: A Summary of North American Bipedal ‘Lizard’ Reports.” North American BioFortean Review Vol. II, No. 2, (2000), pp. 32-39. Gerhard, Ken, and Nick Redfern. Monsters of Texas (Bideford, North Devon: CFZ Press, 2010). Rickard, Bob, “A Reprise for ‘Living Wonders.’” Fortean Times No. 40 (Summer 1983), pp. 4-15. Ward, Jimmy, “Mountain Boomer.” Far Out Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer 1993), pp. 45-46. ***********************************************************************  NOVEMBER 2010 November 19: Book Signing with Troy Taylor at the Frugal Muse Bookstore; 7511 Lemont Road; Darien, Illinois (southeast corner of 75th and Lemont) Meet the author and get signed copies of ghost and crime books! DECEMBER 2010 December 3: Resurrection Mary Tour: Chicago, Illinois -- Troy Taylor hosts his annual winter Resurrection Mary Tour, exploring the TRUE tales of Chicago's most famous ghosts and the many hauntings along Archer Avenue on the city's southwest side. Limited Spots! Reservations! December 26-31: Going to be in Chicago this Holiday season? Make your trip complete with one of the specialty tours that we are offering as a week-long "holiday of horrors"! Featuring annual favorites that we only do during the holiday season, from crime to ghosts, serial killers, zombies and our "Chicago Disaster Tour", held on December 30, anniversary of the Iroquois Theater disaster! Check out Weird Chicago for details! JANUARY 2011 January 8: Night at the Original Springs Hotel -- Okawville, Illinois -- Dinner for two, one-night stay at this haunted hotel and a search for the lingering spirits of this mysterious place! SOLD OUT! January 16: Kansas City Area Regional AGS Meeting! Belvoir Winery at 1325 Odd Fellows Road, Liberty, Missouri -- 3PM. This free meeting is open to the public and will included a presentation and tour of the haunted history of the winery and former Odd Fellows building. If you wish to attend, send an email to Becky Ray at becky@ghost-investigators.com with the names of everyone who will be coming with you. We hope to see you there! January 29: Night at the Lincoln Theater -- Decatur, Illinois -- Spend the entire night looking for the ghosts of "one of the most terrifying places in America". SOLD OUT! (Another overnight at the theater has been scheduled for May 13) FEBRUARY 2011 February 6: Night at the Lemp Mansion -- St. Louis, Missouri -- Exclusive all-night ghost hunt at one of the most haunted houses in America! SOLD OUT! (Another overnight has been scheduled for April 10) February 12: Night at the Old Funeral Home -- Jacksonville, Illinois -- Join us for a night at this former boarding house and funeral home and search for the lingering spirits! Reservations! February 18-19: Haunted America West Coast Conference -- Old Town San Diego, California -- Join us for two days of ghosts, hauntings and the unexplained with speakers and presenters, tours, ghost hunts and more. Details and Reservations! February 19: Night at Bryn Du Mansion -- Granville, Ohio -- Spend the night in search of ghosts at this legendary haunted Ohio location! Reservations! February 26: Night at the Haunted Rectory -- Jacksonville, Illinois -- Search for the ghosts of one of our most unusual locations, the spooky Our Savior Church rectory! Reservations! This electronic message is intended for newsletter subscribers. 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