For centuries in Britain there was a tradition, now largely forgotten, of wiling away the long Christmas nights by huddling around the hearth and telling ghost stories. So trying to keep up that tradition here it goes.
In the quaint village of Evergloom, where snowfall painted the landscape in a serene white, a forgotten tradition stirred beneath the festive veneer. He came but once every century to take the souls of the damaged. For years, locals spoke of the “the Gatherer,” a malevolent spirit that awakened on Christmas Eve, but Evergloom had changed since the last time it had visited and the tradition had been lost.
As the clock struck midnight, the shadowy figure emerged from the forboding woods, cloaked in black tattered robe, he shuffled his way toward the village sack in hand. The villagers, oblivious to the impending horror, reveled in their celebrations, unaware that the gatherer sought to make them pay for their joy.
The creature’s footsteps echoed like funeral drums as it crept through the village, eyes gleaming with a sinister glow. Its elongated fingers traced the outlines of festively adorned homes, leaving frostbitten imprints on windowsills. The air turned frigid, and the once-merry carolers now sang haunting melodies, their voices distorted into mournful wails as he crept from house to house tearing the soles out of people and stuffing them into his sack.
Inside the homes, children nestled in their beds dreaming of presents, were touched with his icy finger. The gatherer, a specter of holiday nightmares, slithered through keyholes and crept into their dreams, turning visions of joy into twisted fantasies of horror.
A chilling breeze swept through Evergloom as the creature reveled in its malevolent dance. Each step left a trail of frozen despair, and the once-colorful decorations dimmed to a ghastly monochrome. The village square transformed into a macabre tableau, with snowmen contorted into grotesque forms and twinkling lights casting ominous shadows.
In the midst of the chaos, a desperate cry pierced the night. The village elder, haunted by tales of the Gatherer from long ago, clutched a relic from an ancient tome—a talisman believed to banish the malevolent spirit. With trembling hands, he recited incantations to thwart the creature’s spectral rampage.
Yet, the Gatherer, unfazed by the feeble attempts to banish it, materialized before the elder. Its voice, a cacophony of echoing whispers, taunted him with long-forgotten sins. The elder, paralyzed with guilt, realized that the phantom fed on the darkness within the hearts of those it encountered.
As the village descended into an abyss of despair, the gatherer reveled in its unholy feast. It drifted away into the ethereal night, leaving Evergloom in perpetual darkness. The once-thriving village now stood frozen in time, a haunting reminder of the terrifying cost of festive merriment.
Hi everyone and welcome back to the dark history podcast where we explore the darkest parts of human history. hope everyone is well I’m Rob your host as always. Welcome to the new bonus episode, A Very Mysterious Christmas. I hope everyone enjoyed the escapades of the gatherer that was my attempt at the long forgotten tradition of my country, it was no Dickens lets put it that way.
Anyway welcome I can't believe we are at another Christmas special, I can't believe this will be the end of season 2 of the show but don't fret there is plenty more to come in the new year and in season 3.
So what delectable Christmas delights do i have in store this year, well today we are going to look into some histories greatest Christmas mysteries, there is going to be tragedies, murders and disappearances galore you know something really upbeat and festive for this time of year. (Just before we start I want to thank our very first sponsor Smart labels for sponsoring this episode but about them later.)
So without further ado for the last time this season please turn off those lights sit back and relax next to the fire for more dark history.
The Calumet and Hecla Mining Company or C&H mining company was the single largest copper mining company in the copper country of northwest Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. In 1913 the longest strikes of miners were occurring and the C&H mining company were suffering due to all of there miners being on strike. The Western Federation of Miners or WFM first established in the area in 1908. Before the WFM did not have a large enough membership to strike effectively until 1913 when they began to demand fair working conditions for the miners.
At the time, there were perhaps 15,000 men working in the mines, of which the WFM claimed 9,000 as members. The membership voted in favor of demanding union recognition from management and asking "for a conference with the employers to adjust wages, hours, and working conditions in the copper district of Michigan". The membership also voted to "declare a strike" if management refused to "grant a conference or concessions". After the vote was held, the WFM sent letters to the mines demanding the conference; the mine managers refused the request, and the strike was called on July 23, 1913. by Christmas of 1913 the miners and the mines were still at a standoff and the strike had been going on five months.
On Christmas Eve, many of the striking miners and their families had gathered for a holiday party sponsored by the WFM's Ladies Auxiliary. The party was held on the second floor of Calumet's Italian Hall.
As partygoers arrived they were greeted By A steep stairway, that was the only entrance to the second floor. Due to lacks building regulations the hall also had poorly-marked fire escape on one side of the building and ladders down the back of the building, which could be reached only by climbing through the windows.
The tragedy began the room was filled with over four hundred people. They were dancing, singing and generally enjoying the festive merriment, forgetting about the ongoing strikes, until over the joyful buzz came a cry of Fire! Nobody knows who exclaimed the word that Christmas Eve night, but it it was a false alarm. As a horde or attendees began to panic tey rushed for the steep stairs. In the ensuing stampede, 73 people including 59 children were killed. The dead comprised 50 Finnish Americans, 13 Croatians, seven Slovenes and three Italians. To date, there has been much debate about who cried "fire" and why.
This is where the story begins to get a little grey. A common story regarding the tragedy states that the doors at the bottom of the Italian Hall's stairs opened inward. According to the story, when the fleeing partygoers reached the bottom of the stairs, they pressed up against the doors, preventing them from opening and causing many people to be crushed. However, all photos of the doors suggest a double set of doors with both sets opening outward. Some reported that there was a second set of doors internally which did open inwardly that caused the crush, but there was no mention of these or any other doors being a contributing factor at the December 1913 coroner's inquest, the 1914 subcommittee hearing, or in any of the newspaper stories of the time.
There were several investigations into the disaster. In the coroner's inquest, witnesses who did not speak English were forced to answer questions in English. Most witnesses were not asked follow-up questions. It appears that many persons called to testify had not seen what happened. After three days, the coroner issued a ruling that did not give a cause of death.
Early in 1914, a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives came to the copper country to investigate the strike and took sworn testimony from witnesses for a full day on March 7, 1914. Twenty witnesses testified under oath and were offered interpreters. Eight witnesses swore that the man who first raised the cry of "fire" was wearing a button on his coat for Citizens' Alliance, an organization that opposed trade unions and strikes.
After the initial wave of grief had passed following the incident, while there was bitterness against C&H, it was considerably greater against the Citizens' Alliance (the "Alliance"), which opposed the union and the strike. It was widely believed that the man who had yelled "fire" was wearing an Alliance badge, and WFM president Charles Moyer—who publicized the accusation—refused to retract it.
A relief committee made up of Alliance members collected $25,000 to aid the families affected by the disaster. The bereaved families would not accept the committee's money, saying that the WFM had promised them aid.
The Italian Hall was demolished in October 1984 and only the archway remains, although a state historical marker was erected in 1987.
Rather a sad story to start but as we move on the next will surely have your scratching your heads. This tale is rather famous but no less interesting.
George and Jennie sodder like many of their Fayetteville neighbors — had both emigrated from Italy as children. The Sodders owned a trucking company and hauled coal from the region's mines. On Christmas Eve in 1945, the sodder family were at home with nine of their 10 children, Joe, their second-eldest, was away with the Army, serving in World War II. George and the two oldest boys were already in bed. Jennie took the youngest, two-year-old Sylvia, to bed with her around 10 p.m.
At 19, Marion was the oldest Sodder daughter. She and five of the younger children — Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie and Betty — stayed up a bit later. At 12:30 a.m., a phone call roused Jennie, who went downstairs to answer it. She told the caller, a woman with a "weird laugh," that she had the wrong number. Then she hung up and went back up to bed, noticing on her way that Marion had fallen asleep on the couch.
An hour later, Jennie Sodder woke again, this time to the smell of smoke. She rushed into George's office, which was full of flames. She and George carried Sylvia out of the house, and the three oldest children — John, Marion and George Jr. Also escaped. The stairs to the attic, where the younger children slept and where the family assumed they were trapped, were already engulfed in fire.
The Sodder's phone didn't work, so Marion ran to a neighbor's house where she tried to call the local fire department. Meanwhile, George tried frantically to reach the attic from outside the house. He rushed for a ladder that was usually stored against the side of the house, but it was missing. He tried to pull one of his coal-hauling trucks to the house so he could climb on top of it and reach the second story. Neither would start, though they'd just been driven the day before.
In the end, all the surviving Sodders could do was watch helplessly as their house burned and collapsed. When the fire department finally arrived hours later, there was nothing left but embers and ash. Everyone assumed the five young Sodders were dead.
Soon, though, questions arose. The first, was why the firstbsearch turned up no sign of human remains? Next was aimed at the rescue service, The fire chief's explanation for why it took hours for help to arrive seemed suspicious.
There were alslrumors swerling about threats George Sodder had received in the weeks and months leading up to the fire. It was all enough to fan the spark of doubt, and the Sodders began to insist that their five missing children were still alive — kidnapped before the fire even started.
This notion was strengthened in the minds In 1947, as an article published in Look magazine caught their attention. It contained a photo featuring several children, and both George and Jennie felt that one of the kids bore a striking resemblance to their "deceased" daughter Betty.
They had always been troubled by the fact that no substantial human remains were recovered during the search. Once they saw the photo, the Sodders became convinced that their children did not die in the fire. They hired the first of several private investigators to help them investigate their chilling suspicion. Though it couldn't be proven that the girl in the photo was Betty Sodder, George and Jennie remained certain that their children had been abducted and that the fire was set to cover up that fact.
It was around this time that they learned that Fire Chief Morris had allegedly found a human heart among the debris and buried it in a box on the property. When asked why he hadn’t notified them of this before, he stated simply that he thought he’d already told them. Morris went with the couple and pointed out the location of where he had buried the box. They dug it up and, for unknown reasons, George took it directly to the local funeral director. After examining the organ, the director said it was a beef liver, not a human heart. Allegedly, Morris later admitted that the organ was, in fact, a beef liver. He claimed to have lied about finding a human heart it in the rubble to convince the George and Jennie Sodder that their children died in the fire and give them a sense of closure.
Due to its rancid smell, the organ box was then placed outside on the porch steps, where it soon mysteriously vanished. Some believed that waste disposal might have picked up the box, but this was never confirmed.
In 1952, they erected a massive billboard along State Route 16 in Ansted, West Virginia, near the house. It featured photos of the children and read, in bold letters, "What was their fate?" It also offered a reward of $5,000.
The Sodder family spent the rest of their lives running down leads about their missing children all over the country. They tried to involve the FBI; though J. Edgar Hoover himself responded to George Sodder's letters, the bureau declined to take the case.
Goerge Sodder died in 1969 after pursuing leads for the rest of his life. The billboard on Route 16 stood until 1989, when Jennie Sodder died and her remaining children took the old faded and weathered sign down. Eventually, as the people involved passed away, the story became more local lore than cold case waiting to be reopened.
I will continue with our stories after this quick advert break from our sponsor smart labels.
Thirty-eight-year-old Lockhart, Texas resident Latricia White was spending Christmas koi with her boyfriend, Lee “Dub” Wackerhagen, and his nine-year-old son, Chance. Chance was supposed to be returned to his mother on Christmas Day, but called her to request a few more days with his father.
On December 27, 1993, Latricia White, a nurse and mother of two, was found dead by her father, Jack. She had been shot six times in the head in her bed. There was no sign of a struggle and nothing in her house was disturbed. Police soon found that her live-in boyfriend, Dub Wackerhagen, had vanished, along with his nine-year-old son, Chance. He was immediately considered a suspect. Authorities found that Dub was jealous and abusive in their relationship. He often yelled at Latricia and wanted to know where she was at all times. However, his sister claims that the fights were not serious. His ex-wife also said that he had a temper and was abusive at times.
Four days before Latricia's murder, a friend witnessed an argument between them about Chance leaving the faucet running, which overflowed onto the floor. After she yelled at Chance, Dub told her that they were leaving, and they did so. three days later, they were back together again at a restaurant, and all seemed fine. he was the prime suspect in her murder. A warrant was issued for Dub Wackerhagen’s arrest.
Three days after Latricia's murder, Dub's pickup truck was found abandoned thirty miles away in Austin, Texas. Investigators noted that this was a high-crime area. In the cab, they found his hunting rifle, checkbook, and wallet. In the back was a toolbox, spare tire, and several Christmas presents. All were covered with blood. On testingthe blood did not belong to Latricia, and blood tests against Dub and Chance were found to be inconclusive.
Dub was charged with her murder. However, his family believes that he is innocent, and that an unknown person killed all three. Authorities believe that his hair-trigger temper led him to murder Latricia and take Chance. They believe that Chance may have been the trigger of the fatal argument between them.
Four months after Latricia's murder , Chance's maternal grandfather received a call apparently from him that said, "Help me! Help me!" He is certain that it was from him, but Dub's family believes that it was a hoax. Neither Dub nor Chance have ever been found.
Interestingly over two decade later in 2016, authorities reinvestigating this case stated that they had found evidence that Dub and Chance were also victims of foul play. The new person of interest in this case is Latricia's ex-husband. They had recently divorced and were involved in a custody battle prior to her murder. He also reportedly went to her house on the last day she was known to be alive. He claimed that no one answered the door. Unfortunately, Despite the new evidence, no arrests have been made. The murderer of Latricia White and the whereabouts of Dub and Chance Wackerhagen remain a mystery.
And our final story for this episode and season is really a strange one.
On Christmas night in 1885, John Larson was visiting his employers, Patrick and Matilda Rooney, at their farmhouse just outside of Seneca, Illinois. After sharing some drinks, Larson went upstairs to bed. However, during the night he had a coughing fit and trouble breathing. He eventually fell back asleep.
Larson woke up to find soot on his pillow. Upon going downstairs, he found Patrick dead in his bedroom with no sign of Matilda. He later discovered a large blackened hole in the kitchen floor with what appeared to be the charred remains of a human foot and a pile of ash. This was all that was left of Matilda Rooney.
The Cause of Death report showed that Matilda had died of spontaneous human combustion, with her entire body catching fire and burning to ashes. The estimated temperature of the fire was 1,400 degrees Celsius or 2,500 °F. There was no other sign of fire damage besides the spot where her body had been found. The report also showed that Patrick had died from smoke inhalation. This explained Larson’s coughing fit during the night; he had been spared because he slept behind a closed door on the second floor.
Although there was some speculation that Larson may have killed Matilda, it seemed impossible for him to have started such a large fire without damaging the rest of the house. It's possible that Matilda Rooney spontaneously combusted due to excessive alcohol consumption. A popular local legend is that she suffered divine retribution for drinking so much on Christmas Eve.
It wasn't until the following day that a doctor arrived from Port Huron, Michigan to carry out an inquest, even though police had arrived quickly. When he entered the house, he immediately noticed an unpleasant smell. Upon further investigation, he found that Patrick Rooney had asphyxiated due to the smoke from a fire that originated in the kitchen.
There was a large table in the kitchen with a candle on it that had burned down one side. Next to the table was a large hole burned through the wooden floor in a 2.5ft by 3ft circle. Through the hole, the underside of the house could be observed, along with a pile of ash and bones.
The doctor found a human skull, a cervical bone, some vertebrae, 6 inches of a right femur and a badly burned ilium. The most shocking discovery was of two badly burned but still recognizable feet in Matilda Rooney's shoes.
When she died, Matilda Rooney weighed approximately 160 pounds. However, after being reduced to ash by the fire, she was reduced to just 12 pounds. The burning of her corpse caused a pungent smell and a greasy soot residue to cling to the walls of the house.
John Larson and John Rooney became suspects. Larson had been with the couple on Christmas Eve, while Rooney stood to gain financially from his parent's death. However, upon further investigation, it was determined that neither man was involved in the crime.
John Larson was later cleared of any foul play due to the presence of an outline in the bed he had slept in that showed his shape which supported his claims that he had slept through the events of that night. However, some people speculated that Larson may have sleepwalked or been sleepwalking during the event.
Although there was no evidence to suggest that an accelerant had been used to cause the fire, John Rooney was cleared of any wrongdoing. Farmhand John Larson died from lung damage a little over two weeks later. His autopsy showed that he had breathed in the same soot and greasy residue that had killed Patrick Rooney.
According to the official investigation by the police and Doctor Clendenin, Matilda Rooney most likely died as a result of Spontaneous Combustion of the Human body. It is believed that her husband Patrick was overcome with fumes and died from asphyxiation, or he may have already been passed out drunk and then died due to the fumes.
Both the doctor and the police pointed to a large amount of alcohol the couple had consumed the previous day as a possible factor in the fire. It was believed at the time that a build-up of gases in the body, combined with a raised blood-alcohol level, could lead to self-ignition. However, this theory has been mostly disproven by modern lab studies, which show that an external source of combustion is always required.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen to this long and dark episode.
I promise I won't waffle on to much but before I get onto the usual I would really like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a happy new year. I want to thank each and everyone of you who have listened to the show over the past two seasons. I want to thank welcome the ones who have discovered the show this year also. I am guna be having a little break but will be back probably on the 3rd of January with the start of season 3.
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