I picked up some ghost story books on a recent trip. One story struck me as straight out of Lovecraft, and it's supposedly true! It should be a movie. Here's my synopsis:
After the immense carnage of the American Civil War, profiteer Charles Wright Congelier made his fortune in re-construction in the South. Then this cockroach carpetbagged his way to Pittsburgh PA, and built a fine mansion on the North Side in Manchester at 1129 Ridge Avenue. Long about 1871, his wife discovered his affair with their young servant girl, upon the revelation of which (in its undeniable, naked carnality), it is reasoned that she went homicidally insane, with a butcher knife in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other, and stabbed and hacked them both in her bed, until Mr Congelier was ground nearly to hamburger and his girlfriend completely decapitated. It was not many Summer days thereafter before neighbors smelled the adulterous decay and summoned authorities, who found Mrs Congelier still in the house among the unwrapped remains of the affair, mumbling incoherently, cradling the girl's head. To the asylum with her!
The Congelier mansion subsequently stands empty for 20 years. Its reputation grows like a shriek from the cellar. In 1892 a railroad company tries to use the building to house immigrant workers, but livelong days give way to unaccountable nighttime wails, and soon all and sundry refuse the robber barrons' quarter. Unintelligible whispers. Right in thier ears.
In 1900, one Dr. Adolph C. Brunrichter gets off the boat from Der Vaterland--possibly by way of London--and buys the place. He avoids social contact and verily becomes the neighborhood recluse, prompting speculation about his past and origins. But neighbors ignore him until the night of August 12, 1901, when a woman's bloodcurdling scream is heard, followed by an explosion of inexplicable lightning behind drawn curtains. Gawkers descend, followed by the police and firemen, who find, get this, a Frankensteinish laboratory, complete with the headless torso of a prostitute strapped to a gurney, her head itself rigged up with electrodes in a nearby bowl, still smoldering from the electrical event. The good Dr is nowhere to be found, but police unearth five more headless hookers in the basement, along with notes indicating that ole Adolph was trying to see how long he could keep a head alive with no body.
Jumpin Jesus! The house goes empty again but before too long, another concern--the Equitable Gas Company--tries to turn it into cheap housing for their own immigrant workforce. This time, the men again hear demonic jibberbabber, which culminates one night at dinner when screams from the basement lead to thier discovery of two co-workers inexplicably remonstrated: one hanging by the neck from a beam, and the other impaled on a wooden bookshelf! And nowhere for a murderer to have escaped to! Abandon ship! Don't let the door hit you on the ass!
Come 1920 and guess who pays a visit. Thomas f***in Edison. That's right, the inventor of the lightbulb. The vanquisher of Tesla. He had an interest in the paranormal, as you may well imagine. Indeed his notes indicate that around this time he was trying to make a machine to communicate with spirits of the netherworld, a device for which he purportedly drew up blueprints after the (unrevealed) events of his visit to Ridge Ave. Alas, he died soon after his visit and nobody much talks about these particular late-career experiments of his.
Fast forward to the final chapter. In 1927 the Pittsburgh police arrest a raving lunatic who claims to be not just any drunkard, but Dr. Adolph. The crazyman spouts Renfieldish tales of demons and murder at the House on Ridge Ave, and the keystone boys don't know what to make of it. They figure he's a nutter and eventually cut him loose.
A few weeks after Adolph disappears again, November 14, 1927, there is a massive explosion in Pittsburgh. Adjacent the Ridge Ave house happened to have been what was at the time the largest natural gas storage tank in the entire world. For reasons unknown, in one of those magnificent early-industrial episodes, it suddenly, catastrophically exploded. It destroyed or damaged almost every building within a 20 mile radius, and totally obliterated the house on Ridge Ave.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The old Ridge Ave site is now approximately the intersection of I-279 and Route 65.
Here are some online mentions:
The Congelier House
http://pittsburgh.about.com/library/...aa102600a.html
Ghost Stories of Pennsylvania
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846
Thomas Edison's consideration of means to communicate with the dead
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...20/ai_18535410
some have theorized that Brunrichter was Jack the Ripper
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/jtripper.htm
The 1927 Equitable Gas Co explosion
http://www.emergency-management.net/indl_fire.htm
this recently published book sounds like an interesting historical fictionalization of Brunrichter, involving a sherlock holmes-ish Edgar Allen Poe
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...38360?v=glance
After the immense carnage of the American Civil War, profiteer Charles Wright Congelier made his fortune in re-construction in the South. Then this cockroach carpetbagged his way to Pittsburgh PA, and built a fine mansion on the North Side in Manchester at 1129 Ridge Avenue. Long about 1871, his wife discovered his affair with their young servant girl, upon the revelation of which (in its undeniable, naked carnality), it is reasoned that she went homicidally insane, with a butcher knife in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other, and stabbed and hacked them both in her bed, until Mr Congelier was ground nearly to hamburger and his girlfriend completely decapitated. It was not many Summer days thereafter before neighbors smelled the adulterous decay and summoned authorities, who found Mrs Congelier still in the house among the unwrapped remains of the affair, mumbling incoherently, cradling the girl's head. To the asylum with her!
The Congelier mansion subsequently stands empty for 20 years. Its reputation grows like a shriek from the cellar. In 1892 a railroad company tries to use the building to house immigrant workers, but livelong days give way to unaccountable nighttime wails, and soon all and sundry refuse the robber barrons' quarter. Unintelligible whispers. Right in thier ears.
In 1900, one Dr. Adolph C. Brunrichter gets off the boat from Der Vaterland--possibly by way of London--and buys the place. He avoids social contact and verily becomes the neighborhood recluse, prompting speculation about his past and origins. But neighbors ignore him until the night of August 12, 1901, when a woman's bloodcurdling scream is heard, followed by an explosion of inexplicable lightning behind drawn curtains. Gawkers descend, followed by the police and firemen, who find, get this, a Frankensteinish laboratory, complete with the headless torso of a prostitute strapped to a gurney, her head itself rigged up with electrodes in a nearby bowl, still smoldering from the electrical event. The good Dr is nowhere to be found, but police unearth five more headless hookers in the basement, along with notes indicating that ole Adolph was trying to see how long he could keep a head alive with no body.
Jumpin Jesus! The house goes empty again but before too long, another concern--the Equitable Gas Company--tries to turn it into cheap housing for their own immigrant workforce. This time, the men again hear demonic jibberbabber, which culminates one night at dinner when screams from the basement lead to thier discovery of two co-workers inexplicably remonstrated: one hanging by the neck from a beam, and the other impaled on a wooden bookshelf! And nowhere for a murderer to have escaped to! Abandon ship! Don't let the door hit you on the ass!
Come 1920 and guess who pays a visit. Thomas f***in Edison. That's right, the inventor of the lightbulb. The vanquisher of Tesla. He had an interest in the paranormal, as you may well imagine. Indeed his notes indicate that around this time he was trying to make a machine to communicate with spirits of the netherworld, a device for which he purportedly drew up blueprints after the (unrevealed) events of his visit to Ridge Ave. Alas, he died soon after his visit and nobody much talks about these particular late-career experiments of his.
Fast forward to the final chapter. In 1927 the Pittsburgh police arrest a raving lunatic who claims to be not just any drunkard, but Dr. Adolph. The crazyman spouts Renfieldish tales of demons and murder at the House on Ridge Ave, and the keystone boys don't know what to make of it. They figure he's a nutter and eventually cut him loose.
A few weeks after Adolph disappears again, November 14, 1927, there is a massive explosion in Pittsburgh. Adjacent the Ridge Ave house happened to have been what was at the time the largest natural gas storage tank in the entire world. For reasons unknown, in one of those magnificent early-industrial episodes, it suddenly, catastrophically exploded. It destroyed or damaged almost every building within a 20 mile radius, and totally obliterated the house on Ridge Ave.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The old Ridge Ave site is now approximately the intersection of I-279 and Route 65.
Here are some online mentions:
The Congelier House
http://pittsburgh.about.com/library/...aa102600a.html
Ghost Stories of Pennsylvania
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...books&n=507846
Thomas Edison's consideration of means to communicate with the dead
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...20/ai_18535410
some have theorized that Brunrichter was Jack the Ripper
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix/jtripper.htm
The 1927 Equitable Gas Co explosion
http://www.emergency-management.net/indl_fire.htm
this recently published book sounds like an interesting historical fictionalization of Brunrichter, involving a sherlock holmes-ish Edgar Allen Poe
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...38360?v=glance
