Analysis of a Real Haunted House.
Everyone has his/her own theories and ideas about Haunted Houses, and these claims are based on assumptions and clichés without proofs. However, "real" haunted houses have always existed, as one evidence from Paranormal Story Archives shows, and these houses hide something unusual and mysterious, as "similar haunted houses" from such literary works as "Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson, "Tales of Horror" by Laura Mullen and "Halloween Street" by Steve Rasnic Tem. The role of these houses, as described in many other articles and essays, is not that simple.
In fact, the existence of the haunted houses is closely connected with moral behaviour of every society; it seems that these houses want to tell very important things to human beings, to reveal secrets of universe and make people believe in supernatural events, in the power of good and evil. All these issues have occupied the public interest for centuries. Although the fascination has changed today, it is still a topic that is a cause for great speculation.
Unfortunately, humans are not able to interpret the signs of these haunted houses, because they are afraid of them, refusing to believe those who experienced something unusual. People always prefer to close their eyes to the most obvious and important matters, but facts are stubborn things, and persons can't hide behind them. They can't deny the existence of such haunted houses, as the house considered the "most haunted house in America" (Paranormal Story Archives, p. 20). This was the home of carpetbagger Charles Wright Congelier, his Mexican wife Lyda, and a young servant girl, Essie, and the house was located at 1129 Ridge Avenue, in Manchester on the North Side of Pittsburgh.
According to data, this house is one of the brightest examples of haunted houses of the past, and the most intriguing one. It attracted attention of many specialists, like Dr. Brunichter and Thomas Edison, and such famous authors as Richard Winer and Nancy Osborn gave their opinion of this house in their book Haunted Houses. This article provides a very detailed observation of the house, starting from the tragedy in the family of Charles Wright Congelier, when in the winter of 1871 Lyda discovered Charles having an affair with the maid, she fatally stabbed Charles and chopped off Essie's head. This cruelty was a starting point in turning the house into a haunted one, and, in accordance with various sources, every haunted house reveals a secret connected with murder. Further, as story tells, the house was vacant for more than twenty years, as people were afraid to occupy such horrible place. In 1892 the attempt to accommodate railroad workers failed, as they were unable to live in the place with the sobbing and screaming of a woman.
Of course, no one could tell for sure, whether people really heard those strange noises. This was the end of the 19th century, and humans possessed neither knowledge, nor ability to check the house. Perhaps, the workers' claims were tales, but, on the other hand, there is no smoke without a fire, and further events had proved this proverb. Dr. Adolph C. Brunrichter was the next person who had bought the house. However, a year later something strange happened there, and when the police arrived, they found a decomposed female body strapped to the bed and five headless young women in basement graves. As Winer and Osborn think, Dr. Brunrichter had been experimenting with severed heads. The doctor himself had disappeared and true reasons of the events were not clarified, the only witness was the haunted house.
Strange, as it may seem, the house somehow wanted to remain vacant, and the next awful event took a really tragic turn. One night two of the emigrant Equitable Gas Company workers were found dead in the basement. As the story in the Paranormal Story Archives tells, "one had a board driven like a stake through his chest and the other was hanging from a rafter" (p.20). And the strangest thing is that these men had both been seen alive a few minutes earlier. Since that time many famous scientists had been interested in the house, and in 1920 Thomas Edison came to study it. However, his death prevent him from finishing the experiment, but Winer and Osborn wrote that Thomas Edison's visit to the house at 1129 Ridge Avenue changed his attitude towards afterlife. In fact, as many witnesses revealed, this haunted house was full of sex orgies, demonic possession, torture and murder.
Thus, it was considered as the house of evil, and even its destruction was really strange. On the morning of November 15, 1927 the nearby giant gas storage tank owned by the Equitable Gas Company exploded with a force, which was felt across the county. The force was so strong that people thought that the earthquake had begun. According to Winer and Osborn, the haunted house was the only structure destroyed in the blast, for which no trace was ever found.
This "real" haunting house has some similarities with the houses described by famous writers Shirley Jackson and Laura Mullen. First of all, all these houses terrified people with strange and awful sounds, and made them crazy. Outside they seemed ordinary buildings, but inside they were alive creatures that were invisible to human eyes. The house of Charles Wright Congelier revealed the sobbing and screaming of a woman. And the house in the story of Laura Mullen "Tales of Horror" expressed voices and breath of something: "Voices, voices, out of the walls And the ceiling's and floors. And then nothing stays where you put it (Mullen, p. 11). And then another proof: "There was the muted sound of sobbing and yet THERE WAS NO ONE IN THAT ROOM!" (Mullen, p. ............
