More Legendary Places In the US

Aurora Cemetery in Texas

 Hey Legend Trippers,

       After doing my post on mysterious places, I decided to go look at see if there were any that a lot of people didn’t know about, so I checked around and found some of these places to go check out. I have gotten the opportunity to visit a couple of them and the others are on my legend tripping places to visit list. Click on the name under to the picture to view their website.

Carbon County Jail Museum

            Starting with the great state of Pennsylvania, the first one I wanted to talk about is the old Carbon County jail in the city of Jim Thorpe. The jail was built in 1869-1870 when the town was known at Mauch Chunk. The jail itself is an awesome two-story, fortress-like rusticated stone building, grant cliff right behind it. The place just looks like it should be haunted. The jail has thick, massive walls and a square, one-story guard turret above the main entrance. It features arched windows on the main facade and on the turret.

The building notable gain to fame is the handprint left by Alexander Campbell, a "Molly Maguire" who was hanged in 1877, to proclaim his innocence. The Molly Maguires were an Irish 19th century secret society active in Ireland, Liverpool and parts of the eastern United States, best known for their terrorist activity among the coal miners in Pennsylvania. After a series of often violent conflicts and terrorist acts, twenty suspected members were convicted of murder and other crimes and were executed by hanging in 1877 and 1878. A number of suspected "Molly Maguires" were imprisoned in Carbon county jail while awaiting trial in 1875-1876. . Legend has it that despite many attempts to remove Mr. Campbell’s handprint, including building a new wall, the mark still remains today.

Today the jail is now a museum and you can go view the handprint. The jail is closed in the winter time, but offers ghost tours during the month of October. People have claimed to seen men dressed in 1800's period clothes in the jail cells or the metal walk ways. Many paranormal investigators think these are the ghostly apparitions of the Molly Maguires.

The cost of for adult is $7.00 and children $5.00. The ghost tours are $10.00 for adults and $7.00 for children. The hand print is located in jail cell 17 and it is locked up, but you can look through the cell window at the handprint. The handprint is copyrighted so you cannot take pictures of the it. You can however purchases pictures at the museum’s gift shop. I have been to this museum two times. I haven’t done the ghost tour yet, but love visiting it and highly recommend it for a legend trip.

Harry Packer mansion

The next place I wanted to talk about is the Harry Parker mansion, which is also located in the town of Jim Thorpe. This old mansion is nestled up on the cliffs overlooking the town. But what makes this structure so unique is that it was the model for Walt Disney world’s Haunted Mansion. You’re probably wondering if the mansion is haunted and the answer is No. Oddly enough the people who own it and offer a murder mystery dinner related to me that there  has been no paranormal activity as far as they know. No guests have reported  seeing anything or any odds things happening.

 The murder mystery dinner is one of the best that my wife and I have been to and the food is awesome. The price is $100 a person and that includes from Friday night to Sunday morning, lodging and food along with taking part and solving the murder mystery. While I was there, I kept looking over my shoulder. The place may not be haunted but it sure looks like it is.

Seattle Underground tour

Now, over to the west side of the US to the state of Washington you have Seattle’s underground tour. In 1889 there was a great fire in Seattle that end up burning down most of the city. After this tragic event, which destroyed some 25 square blocks of mostly wooden buildings in the heart of Seattle, it was unanimously decided that all new construction must be of stone or brick masonry. The city also decided to rise up from the muck in which its original streets lay. Seattle itself was founded on mostly soggy tide flats whose streets would, whenever the rains came, bloat deep enough with mud to consume dogs and small children.

The city was then built with retaining walls, eight feet or higher, on either side of the old streets, filled in the space between the walls, and paved over the fill to effectively raise the streets, making them one story higher than the old sidewalks that still ran alongside them. Building owners, eager to capitalize on the 1890s economic boom, quickly rebuilt on the old, low, muddy ground where they had been before, unmindful of the fact that their first floor display windows and lobbies soon would become basements. Eventually, sidewalks bridged the gap between the new streets and the second story of buildings, leaving hollow tunnels (as high as 35 feet in some places) between the old and new sidewalks, and creating the passageways of the underground.

The 1897 Yukon Gold Rush brought 100,000 adventurers prospectors through Seattle en route to Alaska. The results was a financial boom at Pioneer Square for all manner of entrepreneurs, including barmen and gamblers, con men and madams. When the rush was over 10 years later, these slippery people stayed on and gave the area a bad name. Reputable businesses moved uptown, and Pioneer Square was quickly forgotten. The city’s birthplace lay virtually undisturbed, like the ruins of Pompeii, for nearly two-thirds of a century, before it occurred to anyone that it might be a good idea to preserve it.

In 1965 Bill Speidel started his Seattle Underground Tour of Pioneer Square area. The tour is a seventy five minute leisurely, guided walking tour beneath Seattle’s sidewalks and streets. As you roam the subterranean passages that once were the main roadways and first-floor storefronts of old downtown Seattle, our guides regale you with the stories our pioneers didn’t want you to hear. The price of admission is $19.00 for adults, $16.00 student and $9.00 children. There ghost tours offered into the underground by “Spooked In Seattle”. This event is offered the last Friday of every month, 10pm, and runs about 2 hours. The cost is $30.00 a person and space is limited to 20 guests per ghost hunt. You’ll need to bring a small flashlight, a camera, a recorder, a video recorder and an EMF detector. There has been numerous paranormal events that have been as seen and recorded at the underground. The tour also includes free admission into the new Death Museum.

Flagler College Tour

Moving down to Florida, the sunshine state, you have another unique place to visit. If you thought the hand print at Carbon County Jail was neat. Did you know that there is a tile with railroad developer Henry Flagler’s face on it at the college named after him. It is located in the United States oldest city of Saint Augustine,? It’s true. Constructed in 1885, as Ponce de Leon Hotel, it was the first of its kind. With more than 500 rooms, and design features such as intricately carved solid oak pillars and hand-painted murals, the Ponce de Leon was and still is considered a magnificent work of architecture.

If you step into the lobby of the college and look carefully, you will see in one of the circular patterns near the main entrance, a tile that stands out. This little red tile, no bigger than a quarter, bears a remarkable resemblance to Henry Flagler. The college staff do not know how it really got there. Some think that the tile might have been put there on purpose. Because the tiles were put down individually, it is very possible that the one with Flagler's face was placed intentionally.

There are some supernatural legends that surround the tile. One popular tale is that the face appeared shortly after Flagler's funeral, which was held in the rotunda of the hotel in 1913. A worker noticed the tile the afternoon after the ceremony and pointed it out to management. No one had seen it there before. Flagler's face on the tile, as the tale goes, showed that his spirit was trapped in his beloved hotel. Today you can go look at the tile. Anybody working there will show you the tile and you can even take a picture of it.

Dinosaur State Park

Now over to the last part of our legend trip to the long star state of  Texas. You think that’s neat, did you know that at Glen Rose, there are fossilized tracks of both human and dinosaur in limestone along the banks of the Paluxy River?  It’s true and you can go to the Dinosaur Valley State park and see at them. But if the truth be told, the human tracks were later determined to be that of bipedal dinosaurs. Also some fake tracks were made for financial gain during the great depression. Today the park, you can not only see the dinosaur tracks, but you can also go camping next to them. The daily entrance cost to the park is $7.00 for adult and children are free. The cost of the campsites is $15.00 to $25.00 depending if you want electricity or not.

Aurora Texas

Would you believe that in there is a grave site for an extraterrestrial, whose ship crashed in 1897? If you go to cemetery in Aurora Texas, you can see the grave site. In April 19 1897 the Dallas Morning News ran a story that an alleged UFO hit a windmill on the property of a Judge J.S. Proctor two days earlier at around 6am central time, resulting in the total destruction of the craft. The pilot, who was reported to be "not of this world", did not survive the crash, and was buried by the citizens of Aurora "with Christian rites" at the cemetery.

It goes on to say that the wreckage from the crash site was dumped into a nearby well located under the damaged windmill, while some ended up with the alien in the grave. The cemetery contains a Texas Historical Commission marker mentioning the incident. Now if you do want to go visit the grave site, you will have to get permission from the Aurora sheriff’s department, before going out there. There have been reports of theft and vandalism to the grave site, so the town is very strict about who they let go out there. The original head stone for the visitor’s grave was stolen in 1970, but a now one with a flying saucer on it was put in its place in 2008.

There is no cost to visit the cemetery and Aurora is a very nice and peaceful town. There have been reports that the whole story was a hoax to stop the town from dying, but whatever the case, it is still considered a famous legend in the UFO case files.

As you can see there are no shortages of legendary places to visit in the US, so get out there and go legend tripping.