The Mysteries of Christmas

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In this last week before Christmas, we'll be bringing you not one, but two episodes filled with mysterious and and sometimes downright creepy occurrences, all of which happened over the festive period.

So plug in your earphones, maybe grab yourself a glass of mulled wine, sit back, relax, and enjoy.

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Hidden beneath the saccharine-sweet exterior that saturates the ultide season, there lies a somewhat dark and ominous history.

For many families, Christmas was one of the few times of year when they might occasionally find themselves united under one roof, which led to the evolution of some customs and traditions, which may not seem appropriate compared to how we now spend the festive period.

The concept of recounting scary stories and ghost tales in an effort to shock and appall your assembled audience might seem like something more at home during Halloween.

And yet historically, the act of trying to outscare your relatives with ever more horrifying and gory anecdotes used to be a key part of festive gatherings.

Tall tales involving the ghosts of departed relatives and neighbours were a traditional and regular feature of Christmas Day, as well as stories detailing the grisly exploits of a number of festive demons and monsters.

Witches and vengeful spirits such as Krampus and Hans Trap remained a significant trope in Yuletide celebrations, acting as a reminder that sometimes, the more ungrateful members of society could expect to receive nothing more at Christmas than what they ultimately deserved.

Over time, these darker elements have slowly disappeared from the festive landscape, but with the rapid expansion of global communications and the mass media, it has never been more evident that for a certain percentage of the world's population, The 25th of December can often turn out to be just another day.

The reality is is that unexpected things can potentially happen to people all year round, and the season of goodwill won't necessarily protect you from the dangers that are lurking out there in the darker corners of society.

On the evening of the 24th of December in 1890, the Reverend Samuel Malilu had been invited to celebrate the festivities at the house of one of his congregation.

Malalu was the Methodist minister for the town of South Bend in Indiana, and the property in question belonged to a local farmer named Tom Lurch.

When the clergyman arrived, he found the celebrations in full swing, with many other guests already in attendance.

In addition to Mr.

and Mrs.

Lurch themselves, their sons Oliver and Jim were also present, as well as several other family members and neighbours.

Amongst this number was Lillian Hirsch, the daughter of a Chicago attorney and the girlfriend of 20-year-old Oliver.

By 10pm, the gathering had managed to drink the entire supply of water.

As a result, Oliver was asked by his father to go and fetch some more from the outside well.

There had been something of a blizzard in the week previous, and the lurch property was covered in a thick blanket of crisp white snow, apart from the main carriageway which had been cleared for the arrival of guests.

Pulling on his snow boots and a thick jacket, Oliver kissed his girlfriend and then made his way out into the night, carrying two empty pails.

Approximately five minutes later, the visitors were shocked to hear what sounded like screaming coming from outside, and several of them, including Malalu and Hirsch, ran out to see what was happening.

Malalu would later testify that as he had run outside, he could clearly hear Oliver's voice being carried along the night sky, screaming and pleading for help.

The only problem was that Oliver himself was nowhere to be seen.

In the dim light coming from the moonlit clouds above, the Reverend could see the missing man's footprints in the snow, travelling in a straight line up to a point just short of the well itself, where they came to an abrupt halt.

There were no signs of a struggle or a disturbance, and one of the two metal pails he had been carrying lay discarded next to where the footprints ceased.

Suddenly, Oliver was heard to shout, Help!

Help!

It's got me!

As the throng of worried guests looked all around in bewilderment, there was a further piercing scream, and the assembled witnesses suddenly realised that Oliver's cries were coming from inside the clouds directly above them.

For the next few minutes, Oliver continued to cry out and plead for help, his voice gradually becoming fainter and fainter until it faded away altogether.

The following morning, a full search of the farmland surrounding the house was organised by the authorities, but no trace of Oliver Lurch was ever found.

It was as if something had come down out of the night sky and carried him away.

Theories about what might have happened to the missing farmer's son ranged from the unlikely to the downright impossible.

Some speculated that he had been followed outside by another partygoer, who had murdered him and then thrown his body down the well.

The killer had then concealed themselves and imitated his voice, successfully fooling the drunken guests who had stumbled outside, before rejoining their ranks.

Another suggestion was that the unlucky youth had been snagged on the anchor line of a passing hot air balloon and had been slowly carried away to his death, his body deposited some distance away and never identified.

More outlandish explanations include that he was taken away by some form of flying cryptid, or that he may be one of the earliest recorded victims of a UFO abduction.

But many sceptics argue that the tale is entirely fictitious and is nothing more than an adaption of Charles Ashmore's Trail by Ambrose Bierce.

Bramshill House is a sprawling Jacobean mansion which is located in the northeast of the English county of Hampshire, not far from the town of Wokingham.

Whilst a residence of some kind has existed at the location dating as far back as the 14th century, the house in its current form was constructed in the early 1600s and holds the accolade of being one of the most haunted properties in the United Kingdom.

Throughout the years, no less than 14 different ghosts have been reported by both guests and visitors.

These include the spirit of a gardener who drowned in the lake that was situated on the property and also the apparition of a young boy who is often seen crying.

manifesting in the library and attempting to hold the hands of the people who see him.

But it is Bramshill's most famous resident, the White Lady, which terrifies the guests more than any other, the precursor to a harrowing tale which all began in Italy.

The Orsini clan had long associated themselves with the upper echelons of Italian society, and in time, it was the turn of their youngest daughter Genivri to marry into the ranks of another family of equal nobility.

The excited 15-year-old went on to be married on Christmas Eve of 1747 in a lavish ceremony at her ancestral home.

When the wedding breakfast had ended, the young bride playfully took hold of a sprig of mistletoe and then challenged her new husband to a game of hide-and-seek.

After a short time, the young groom conducted a search of the house, but was unable to find his young wife.

Enlisting the help of some of the guests, he tried again, but there was still no sign of her.

As time passed, further frantic searches of the property were conducted, but young Ginevry was never found.

Eventually, her anguished family abandoned the house, leaving for a new life in France.

It was only when their old home was being renovated for new owners that builders moving an old oak chest down from the upper levels found the skeletal remains of the missing girl lying inside, still clad in her wedding gown and holding the mistletoe in her hand.

It was clear that after she had concealed herself inside the chest, the spring lock had snapped shut behind her, entombing her within.

The mistletoe chest, as it came to be known, was later acquired by Sir John Cope, a British banker and politician who had made Bramshill House his family home some years previous.

He had been holidaying in Italy.

and took his new purchase home with him when he returned to England.

It soon became apparent that the chest itself was not the only thing that the baronet had imported.

Sightings of a woman dressed all in white and weeping to herself were soon reported in both the long corridor and the fleur-de-lis room, both of which were in the same part of the house where the chest had been placed.

These encounters with the white lady continued through the years, with Lady Joan Penelope Cope recalling in her memoirs that both her and her brother had been visited by the apparition in their bedrooms when they were children.

During the Second World War, the deposed King Michael of Greece resided with his family at Bramshill House.

Almost at once his children came to him crying, stating that a lady in a white dress kept walking through their bedrooms at night.

At first, the king did not believe such tall stories, until he himself witnessed the ghost walk past him and right through a wall when he had been seated in his study.

The panicked monarch ordered that the chest be subjected to an exorcism, but still,

sightings of the White Lady persist.

For some considerable amount of time, the small village of Seneca in northern Illinois was famous for little more than the fact that the native Kickapoo tribe had taken great exception to the visiting French missionary who had first tried to convert them to Christianity during the late 1600s.

They had demonstrated their rejection of his efforts by hacking him to pieces as he prostrated himself before them in prayer.

But the settlement would find itself somewhat unexpectedly thrust into the national consciousness following a chilling event which transpired there in the early hours of Christmas Day in 1885.

The incident in question took place at an isolated farmstead on the periphery of the village, where Patrick and Matilda Rooney had been celebrating Christmas Eve with their son Jonathan and a farmhand named John Larson.

All four occupants of the premises had merrily consumed a considerable amount of whiskey that evening and had not retired to their beds until a suitably late time.

In the early hours of the following morning, Larson had awoken suddenly after experiencing a severe coughing fit, before shrugging off the event and falling back into a deep slumber.

When he woke again some time later, he was startled to see traces of what appeared to be blood and soot stained on his pillow.

Arising in a state of confusion, he made his way out of his room onto the upstairs landing, to find the door to Mr and Mrs.

Rooney's bedroom unexpectedly ajar.

To his shock, he found Patrick lying deceased on the bedroom floor, but nothing could prepare the farm worker for what awaited him downstairs in the kitchen.

In the centre of the kitchen floor, a three-foot-wide hole had been burned right down through the wooden floorboards of the building.

A small pile of ashen bone had been unceremoniously deposited onto the scorched patch of earthen rock that was now exposed, along with what appeared to be a human skull and pieces of backbone.

But it was what was lying on the floor alongside the hole that truly horrified the farmhand.

A pair of familiar leather shoes lay discarded to one side, still containing the owner's feet.

which were blackened and seared, but remained largely intact.

As he struggled to take in what remained of his employer, Larson noticed a half-burned candle on the kitchen table.

But besides a strange and greasy substance which had been deposited on the room's ceilings and walls, nothing else appeared to have been damaged by the fire.

The local physician Dr.

Floyd Klendenen found his initial irritation at having been called out to attend the address on Christmas Day being replaced with a feeling of utter disbelief.

Matilda Rooney had weighed approximately 160 pounds, and the doctor estimated it would have taken temperatures in the region of 1400 degrees Celsius to reduce her body to nothing more than the small pile of sooty particulate that now remained.

And yet, not a stick of furniture in the kitchen had sustained any significant level of damage.

The cause of Patrick Rooney's death was later discovered to be smoke inhalation.

a diagnosis that was seemingly confirmed when the hapless John Larson also went on to expire a mere two weeks later.

The cause of his death proved to be severe damage to his lungs.

It has been hypothesised that Martha died from the mysterious phenomenon known as spontaneous human combustion, where a person's body can be near completely destroyed by a rapid and intensely burning fire, which bursts into life with no apparent source.

With his bedroom door left open, It is possible that her husband died from a cloud of smoke and soot that was propelled upstairs during this rapid burn, with John Larsen's life only partially prolonged by the fact that his bedroom door had been closed at the time.

Arguments have been made that Larsen bore ill-will to his masters and that he died as a result of a botched attempt to kill them, but no explanation for how he was able to light a fire in a wood-furnished cabin and prevent it from spreading has ever been offered.

For the God-fearing people of Seneca though, there was only one explanation.

Alcohol was the work of the devil.

And in this case, committing the sin had also acted as the punishment, its fumes fueling the flames of the candle that had caught Martha as she staggered past on her way upstairs to bed.

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Throughout history, there are countless records involving the inexplicable and tragic phenomenon of ghost ships.

Vessels which somehow attempt to complete their final, ill-fated journey long after they have disappeared beneath the waves.

Many of these mysteries are associated with America's Great Lakes region, which appears to have claimed a high number of ships and lives over the years.

One vessel which would sadly go on to be categorized in both of these subject matters was a ship by the name of the Rouse Simmons.

But to the people living in the vicinity of Lake Michigan, this craft will be forever known in far more affectionate terms as the Christmas Tree Ship.

The Simmons was a three-masted wooden schooner, owned and maintained by Captain Herman Shernaman, who would traverse the lakes during the course of each year carrying a variety of goods.

But as the festive season would approach, Captain Shernaman aimed to generate the bulk of his yearly profits transporting a very particular type of product.

Like many other ships masters in the region, he would try to fit in as many trips as possible transporting freshly cut evergreens from Michigan's upper peninsula to be sold on as Christmas trees in and around the city of Chicago.

Over time, this enterprise became something of a family affair, with Herman's wife and daughter selling the trees direct from the ship when it arrived in the harbor, and his brother August going on to purchase his own ship in an effort to assist with the business.

But the cruel storms which are infamous across the Great Lakes during the winter months are ruthless and unforgiving, and Auguste's ship would break apart, with the loss of all aboard her during a trip which took place in November of 1898.

Undeterred, Herman pressed on, continuing to donate a generous portion of his stock to local businesses and needy families, to the extent that he became widely known to the inhabitants of Chicago as Captain Santa.

On November 22nd, 1912, the Simmons was about to set sail from the port of Thompson when a sudden storm blew in.

The weather was so poor that several of the men refused to sail aboard her, leaving Herman and just 17 of his crew to make the journey.

With his ship heavily laden with over 15,000 Christmas trees and as she battled against 30-foot waves, it soon became apparent to the captain that the gamble he had taken was not going to pay off.

The Simmons was later sighted by volunteers crewing the Kuani lifeboat station, fighting to make headway amidst a howling gale and with her distress flags on full display.

But by the time a powered cutter had been found and had managed to make its way out into the storm, there was no sign of the beleaguered ship or her crew.

Two weeks later on the 6th of December, Captain William Boxter was trying to guide his own vessel through a thick bank of fog when he heard the sound of a ship's bell directly ahead of him coming out of the mist.

Desperate to avoid a collision, the captain frantically took evasive action, only to find that there was no ship in his path.

But as Boxter peered out into the fog surrounding his vessel, he caught sight of what appeared to be fresh evergreens, floating serenely across the lake's surface alongside his craft.

Weeks later, several local youths were playing down by the lake's shore when they came across a pair of Christmas trees in immaculate condition, having apparently washed ashore there.

As the children gleefully moved in to salvage their find,

They suddenly saw a shape off in the distance, moving in and out of the mist resting on the surface of the lake.

They would later describe the phantom vessel to their parents as having three masts and tattered sails, drifting listlessly along with the wind.

Over the subsequent years, sightings of this mysterious ghost ship would persist, increasing in frequency as the festive period approached, with yet more Christmas trees continuing to wash up along the lake shore.

The wreck of the Rouse Simmons would not be discovered for a further 50 years, when in 1971, a local diver discovered her sitting perfectly upright on the bottom of the lake at a depth of 170 feet.

She was virtually intact, her decks still lined with neatly piled stacks of Christmas trees, preserved by the freezing waters.

And while she never fulfilled her final delivery to Chicago, her memory continues to be celebrated each and every year by the city and its people.

Much as with the region of the Great Lakes, there are hundreds of disappearances of ships and aircraft which have occurred within the boundaries of the Bermuda Triangle.

The inexplicable nature of many of the incidents which have taken place in this enigmatic region has ensured they are forever enshrined in maritime law, including the disappearance of the USS Cyclops and the loss of Flight 19.

But there have been many lesser known and equally baffling occurrences, one of which would take place during the Christmas period of 1948.

On the evening of the 27th of December that year, a Douglas Dakota DC-3 designated callsign NC-16002

touched down at San Juan's main airport, ending the first half of its regular return journey.

As the aircraft stewardess bade farewell to their passengers and prepared to take on those returning to the United States from their Christmas holidays, the other two crew members were liaising with the airport's engineers.

Whilst the Puerto Rican mechanics found co-pilot Ernest Hill to be quite reasonable in their dealings with him, Captain Robert Lindquist would prove to be much more of a problematic character.

Eager to take off and make his way back to Miami, Lindquist was dismissive of the ground crew's concerns when they discovered low levels of distilled water in the plane's batteries.

It was only with the intervention of the airport's chief mechanic that Lindquist finally agreed to delay his departure, whilst the batteries were refilled.

But he steadfastly refused to remain any longer in order to recharge them to full capacity.

which he stated could be done by the aircraft itself whilst it was in flight.

By way of a compromise, he did agree to circle the airport for a short period of time after take-off prior to leaving the area, only for it to then be discovered that his radio was being affected by the lack of power.

Having lifted off, the Dakota proceeded to circle the airport for a further 11 minutes, before breaking away and heading off across the Bahamas towards the Florida coastline.

Whilst en route, the regular updates provided by Lindquist and Hill did not reveal anything untoward,

but for some reason, they were not picked up by radio operators in Miami itself, but instead had to be relayed across to them from others situated in New Orleans.

The weather was fine, and just after 4am on the morning of the 28th, as the airport ground crews in Florida went about their business, Lindquist radioed to say that he was 50km south of the facility and would be landing there within the next 20 minutes.

Fully aware of the plane's limited battery and fuel reserves, when it had still not arrived by 0600 hours, the Miami control tower immediately raised the alarm with the local authorities.

A rapid and wide-scale search of the region was conducted, which encompassed Cuba, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Florida Everglades, but no trace of the missing Dakota was anywhere anywhere to be found.

With no wreckage or bodies from the missing aircraft having ever been discovered, it has only been possible to speculate as to what may have caused the disappearance of the three crew members and 28 passengers who vanished with her.

It was largely theorised at the time that the aircraft must have suffered a massive power failure and crashed into the sea.

as it made its final approach to the airport.

But the waters which lie off the coast in this region are both shallow and crystal clear, and the significant wreckage that would have resulted from such an impact was never discovered.

Some believe that Lindquist and Hill may have missed a vital radio transmission concerning a change of wind direction, meaning they were much further off course than they believed themselves to be.

But this theory is undermined by the fact that Captain Lindquist knew he was approaching from the south of the airfield.

This was markedly different from his regular flight plan, meaning he was aware of the wind change and had compensated for it with the new path he had taken.

The fact remains that so close to a populated area, almost within touching distance of its final destination, there should have been some evidence or witnesses as to the final fate of this unfortunate aircraft.

The fact that there was not, and that the area it was lost in forms one of the points of the infamous Devil's Triangle has inevitably led to fringe suggestions that the Dakota may have entered a time or dimensional vortex, or perhaps been intercepted by beings of an extraterrestrial origin.

Sadly, despite being the most established and populated of the three, the westernmost tip of the Bermuda Triangle also remains the most active in terms of disappearances.

And 20 years on from the unexplained loss of Flight NC16002,

the city of Miami would be the scene of an equally unexplained nautical mystery.

On the evening of December 22nd 1967,

a local businessman named Daniel Burak arrived in the city marina in company with his friend Father Patrick Horgan.

Burak was a former hotel owner and was well known amongst the other members of the marina.

It was here that he stored his 23-foot-long cabin cruiser, which he had christened christened Witchcraft.

A keen sailor, Burak had decided to spend that evening out on the water, cruising a short distance off the coastline so that Horgan could enjoy the Christmas lights which were on display there.

At approximately 9pm,

the local Coast Guard station received a radio transmission from the Witchcraft, stating that it had struck a submerged object and required their assistance.

The operator who took Burak's call would later describe his tone as calm and confident, more of a request for assistance, if possible, rather than a conventional SOS call.

Burak further informed the operator that he was not far from navigational boy number 7 and that whatever he had hit had disabled his engine, but the boat itself was otherwise intact.

With the Miami coastline always busy at this time of year, Coast Coast Guard resources were already in operation out on the water, and so it took less than 20 minutes for the first rescue vessel to arrive at the scene.

But the disabled motorcruiser they had expected to find was not present, and was also nowhere to be found following a wide search pattern within the vicinity of the navigational buoy.

Throughout that evening and into the following morning, further and more extensive searches for the missing boat were conducted, but neither the craft nor any wreckage of it were located.

Immediately, questions arose about the incident.

What fate could have possibly befallen the boat and its occupants in such a busy area and in such a short space of time?

Burak was notoriously safety conscious, having easily passed all the inspections which had been carried out on his boat.

He had even gone so far as having the witchcraft fitted with a special flotation device, which would keep it afloat even if part of it had become flooded.

As was customary to the region, there had been a brief spell of bad weather that evening, and so it was theorised that this might have swept the two men and their craft further out to sea, away from the rescuers.

But it was clear that apart from the engine and possibly the rudder, The rest of the cruiser and its electrical systems were still working at the time of the incident.

Burak had neither transmitted any further radio messages nor fired any flares, which would have been expected had he found himself being dragged away from the rescue zone.

In the years which followed, various conspiracy theories pertaining to Daniel Burak himself started to circulate, speculating that he had deliberately deceived the Coast Guard in relation to his predicament.

Burak's previous hotel had mysteriously burned to the ground four years beforehand, and he had used the money he had made from selling the land it had been built upon to fund a new building.

He had later gone on to sell all his interests in this new business, and for 18 months prior to his disappearance, he had effectively been living off the profits.

Exactly one month after the loss of the witchcraft, A property developer who lived near to Burak's home was robbed at gunpoint, and the offenders made off from the scene by boat.

Some speculated that the hotelia had faked his own death and then used the proceeds of the subsequent robbery to set up a new life far away from the area.

But as intriguing as this story is, the disappearance of a Catholic priest along with the missing man somewhat undermines this theory.

It seems unlikely that this holy man would desert his vows and flock to embark on a criminal career, or that Burak would have killed or abducted him in order to further cover his tracks.

And so the question remains, what was the submerged object that the witchcraft struck, and what did it do to his vessel in the short space of time before help could arrive on the scene?

In each of the cases we have examined, It is of course possible to conceive rational and fact-based hypotheses for the conundrums they present.

And yet even after this, further questions still remain, difficult and nagging issues that serve to undermine even the most conventional of explanations.

As we have seen time and time again, the sea is a mysterious and cruel mistress, one that is capable of effortlessly claiming human life and leaving little or no trace of the methods she has used to do so.

Join us tomorrow for another festive episode, in which we'll be focusing on some of the most heinous and unsolved true crimes committed over the holiday period.