Lore 242: From the Ashes

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For many of us, home is a sanctuary.

It's a haven where we raise our families, lie our heads each night, and spend the majority of our lives.

And sure, houses are built to last, but that doesn't mean our homes don't need an upgrade every now and then.

Such was the case for Mary Ann Christensen's house in northern Norway.

It had been in the family for years, originally bought by her grandfather way back in 1914.

And in 2020, she and her husband decided that it was time to do a bit of refurbishing.

It was hard work, but they were making good time.

They had torn up the floorboards and had just started laying new insulation when Marianne found something strange.

It was small and circular.

At first, they thought they might have found the wheel of a toy car, but as they dug deeper they uncovered more and their curiosity bloomed into absolute amazement.

Still, they had to be sure of what they'd found, so they immediately called in a team of archaeologists to help investigate.

And it turns out Marianne and her husband's suspicions were right.

Beneath the floorboards of their family home lay an ancient thousand-year-old Viking grave.

It's the kind of news that we love to latch on to.

Reports of mysterious treasure found in the walls, of old wells hiding beneath kitchen linoleum, or mummies sealed behind wallpaper.

Why?

Because there is one kind of treasure that we're all eager to unearth.

We love a good story.

They may not be in the form of buried Viking treasures, but these tales are worth uncovering nonetheless.

And sometimes a city becomes filled with so many buildings, so many stories, so many memories, that it can barely contain them all.

And that is when the past begins to leak into the present.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

When it comes to Eastern American cities, Atlanta is younger than many of them.

At least younger than this New England resident is used to.

But that doesn't mean it's devoid of history.

Quite the contrary.

Founded in 1837, the city was named to honor the Georgia governor at the time.

Or, well, really to honor his daughter, Martha Atalanta Lumpkin.

Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't for her middle name Atalanta.

No, it was actually her first name.

You see, originally the city wasn't called Atlanta at all.

It was called Marthasville.

Not quite as snappy, I know, but don't worry, it didn't stick around for long.

Growth was on the horizon, you see.

Georgia was building a new train line to the Midwest, and, well, all trains have some end of the line somewhere, the last stop, if you will.

And for the Western and Atlantic train line, that stop was Martha'sville.

In fact, Martha'sville became so heavily associated with this train that the city changed its name over to it to reference the Atlantic line.

And so the name Atlanta was born.

From that point on, Atlanta was an industry hub.

Its position on the railroad made it a hotspot for trading and commerce.

But from the very beginning, it was also home to tragedy.

Now, when I say Atlanta was a new city, I of course meant it its current incarnation.

There have been residents on that land for thousands of years.

Originally, the Cherokee and Creek Indians called it home.

But as was the painful fate for so many indigenous peoples, they were forced out from their land.

And that booming commerce of the 1800s that I mentioned, well, guess who made it run?

That's right, enslaved black people.

By the year 1850, only 13 years after Atlanta's founding, roughly one-fifth of the city's residents were enslaved African Americans.

Already, the soil ran red with blood.

And then, the Civil War came.

Several battles took place right there in or around the city.

The Battle of Peachtree Creek, the Battle of Atlanta, and the Battle of Ezra Church are three examples.

Atlanta was in the heart of the Confederacy, plus a railroad center for transporting military goods and thus a target for Northern Union armies.

One Atlanta invasion was so famous it was even adapted into fiction and film, a little story called Gone with the Wind.

But you tune into the show for another kind of tale, ghost stories.

And Atlanta's Civil War past is full of them.

Take Kennesaw Mountain, for example.

The name Kennesaw is derived from the Cherokee word for burial ground, and it sure lived up to that name.

William T.

Sherman commanded 100,000 Union troops.

Joseph E.

Johnson commanded 50,000 Confederate troops.

Both made their way toward Atlanta, skirmishing here and there along the way.

But it all came to a head in late June of 1865 at Kennesaw Mountain, 25 miles outside of Atlanta.

A battle raged, smoke plumed in the air, and this was no mere skirmish anymore.

Between the two armies, 441 cannons hurled lead toward the sky.

Over 35,000 horses were arranged in deadly lines.

When the gunpowder cleared, between 4,000 and 5,000 troops were dead, more than enough to leave a few ghosts behind.

Today, the site is known as the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.

The land is etched with beautiful green hiking trails.

Educational placards about the war dot the hillside.

But the battle really didn't end in 1865.

Not if the stories are to be believed, that is.

Visitors there claim to have felt a sense of unease among the underbrush.

People have seen soldiers, Union and Confederate alike, in tattered, bloody clothing.

I imagine the hikers feel a spark of excitement at first, thinking that they'd stumbled upon a reenactment.

Until that is, the soldiers vanish into thin air.

Some hikers have been amazed to find what seems to be cannon smoke wafting through the air, along with the stench of death.

Oh, and one other thing: local townsfolk claim that uniformed soldiers have even appeared inside their homes from time to time.

But hey, maybe that's just another normal day for the residents of the Georgia Capitol.

After all, the dead of Kennesaw Mountain are far from Atlanta's only hauntings.

The old farmhouse was built around 1870.

Like many historical homes, it had its own name too, the Wren's Nest.

It was the home of author Joel Chandler Harris from 1881 to 1908.

He lived there with his wife and nine children, only six of whom lived to adulthood.

Harris was a white author known for his famous Uncle Remus stories, stories which drew from traditional African-American folktales.

And where did he learn those stories, you might ask?

Well, from the enslaved peoples themselves.

And while some insist that his adaptations subverted structures of white supremacy, others argue that he was profiting off the culture and history of a community who couldn't do so themselves.

A chunk of change hefty enough to purchase a stately home.

Today, the sprawling house is a museum.

But if the whisperings are to be believed, it's still fully inhabited by ghosts.

On one occasion, the museum director decided to relocate Harris's typewriter to another building, but as she tried to drive away with it, her car inexplicably shut down and refused to restart.

Paranormal investigators have recorded mysterious voices on tape, along with strange banging sounds.

The scent of candle wax sometimes lifts on the breeze, although the house, of course, is lit with electricity now.

But most frightening of all are the full-body apparitions.

It said that there are two little boys who play on the steps, believed to have been Harris's grandsons who died in infancy, right there on the property.

Two of Harris's sons have been seen as well, one even standing in the room where his father died.

A woman who eerily resembles photographs of the former housemaid Chloe has been seen peeking through window drapes.

And of course, there's also the man himself, Joel Chandler Harris, who has been known to kick back and relax in what should have been an empty rocking chair.

Atlanta, however, has plenty more to offer when it comes to haunted buildings, like the Fox Theater, a lavish 1920s movie palace.

There have been many a report of spooky activity in the old cinema, and hey, to be fair, if I were a ghost, I would want to live there too.

It's regal and ornate, originally built in 1928 as headquarters for the Shriners, and designed to mimic the soaring mosques of the Far East.

Picture wide domes, gold leaf, lush textiles, and sweeping archways.

Ultimately, though, the Shriners realized that a building like that would be too expensive to maintain on their own, so they leased it to film mogul William Fox, as in 20th Century Fox.

His company turned the place into a breathtaking cinema, which boasted the second largest theater organ in the world, nicknamed the Mighty Mo, after the Moeller organ company that built it.

While many a world-class player has lain their hands on the great machine, one organist, a guy named Bob Van Camp, was the resident player of the Mighty Mo for 25 years.

He was so connected to the instrument that when he passed away, his ashes were allegedly sprinkled in the attic over the organ chambers.

According to legend, you can still hear him playing with love and skill on long, quiet nights.

And that's not all the Fox has to offer.

A backstage elevator is supposedly haunted by the dead girlfriend of one of the theater's managers.

And apparently, she likes to go on joyrides.

The elevator tends to zip up and down, all on its own.

Some visitors to the theater have heard the sound of footsteps emanating from empty halls and felt sudden chills in the air.

In fact, the Fox Theater's haunted reputation is so robust that every October, the Fox even offers ghost tours to the public.

However, the Shriners weren't the only Atlantans to look overseas for their architectural inspiration.

In the 1890s, Atlanta furniture magnate Amos Giles Rhodes and his wife Amanda took a trip to Europe and were so enchanted by the Germanic castles they saw that they decided that they simply had to have one of their own.

And when you're as rich as Amos and Amanda was, I guess you can just do stuff like that.

So in 1904, they commissioned a brand new castle, and they titled it after themselves, Rhodes Hall.

This looming, opulent building was constructed out of carved granite, and they spared no expense, inside or out.

It's so stunning, in fact, that today Rhodes Hall is even used as an upscale wedding venue.

Now, you might think that a shiny new castle like that wouldn't hold the same shadowy shadowy forces as an ancient one, but you'd be wrong, because Rhodes Hall seems to be very, very haunted.

Paranormal investigators have captured everything on camera from doors slamming and children laughing to mysterious flickering lights.

Some visitors feel a hostile presence upon entering, as if whoever or whatever is there with them wants them to leave.

Some have even seen a menacing figure known only as the shadow man lurking in the basement, and others claim to have come upon a spectral old woman believed to be Amanda herself who is said to have died inside the house.

But the Wren's Nest, the Fox Theater and Rhodes Hall are all nothing compared to the most cursed place in all of Atlanta, the Weinkopf Hotel.

Atlanta is sometimes referred to as the Phoenix City, having risen from the ashes of the Civil War after being burned to the ground, just like the mythical bird itself.

But digging into Atlanta's history, it seems the lick of flame didn't end there.

After all, what fire does best is spread.

The Weinkopf Hotel was absolutely fireproof.

All the advertisements said so.

The structure was built from reinforced steel, solid and impossible to burn, like a metal skeleton running throughout the building.

Plus, it was only two blocks from the fire department.

See?

Safe as can be.

And those weren't its only impressive features.

Built in 1912, the hotel was one of Atlanta's very first skyscrapers.

At 15 feet tall, it towered over one of the busiest parts of downtown, a monument to opulence and industry.

Now, this was an era of man-made power, of innovation.

No world wars had yet ravaged the nation.

No depression had yet plunged the economy into ruin.

A sense of invincibility bolstered the moneyed elites, and their hubris rose as tall as the hotel itself.

Now, if your ears perked up a moment ago at the year 1912, I don't blame you.

Yes, that's the year the Titanic sank.

And yes, boasting of an unsinkable ship sounds quite a bit like claiming to have a fireproof hotel.

So it should not come as a surprise that for as fireproof as the Weinkop was supposed to be, they figured that there was no need for a sprinkler system, nor more than a single stairwell to serve all 15 floors.

After all, they would never need to use them, would they?

But if we've learned anything from the Titanic, or Greek tragedy for that matter, hubris always comes before a fall.

We aren't sure how it started.

Our best guess is that someone was smoking in the corridor.

Maybe they couldn't sleep.

It was the middle of the night, after all, close to 3 in the morning.

Picture a hotel guest leaning against the corridor wall, getting some quiet from their family after a long day of Christmas shopping.

Or maybe it was one of the 40 all-star high school students in town for a mock legislative session run by the YMCA, anxious and excited about the following day, roaming the halls with their friends.

But the truth is, we can't be sure how it began.

What we do know is that on Saturday, December 7th of 1946, nearly 33 years after the hotel opened, fire finally arrived at the Weinkopf.

A bellboy discovered the problem at 3.15 a.m.

He'd been attending to a call on a fifth floor room and he started back down the stairs toward his desk, but he never made it because when he arrived at the third floor corridor, he found it full of smoke and his exit blocked by flame.

The fire spread quickly after that, filling up the stairwell and trapping everyone above the third floor where they were.

And while steel can't burn, other things can, like lush wallpaper layered seven sheets thick, and wooden doors, and corridor walls finished with painted burlap.

Those hungry flames devoured all of it.

People flung their windows open, desperate for fresh air or even escape, which only fueled the inferno as the fire drank down each new burst of oxygen.

The night manager called room after room, trying to warn the guests, but those calls tied up the phone line, meaning that the fire station wasn't reached until 3.42 a.m., nearly a half hour after the fire was discovered.

By the time the fire trucks arrived, people were already desperately trying to escape.

Many jumped from their room windows, some leaping nearly 70 feet to their deaths.

Others attempted to jump to the mortgage guarantee building across the alley, with many missing their mark and falling to their deaths on the sidewalk below.

A few people even made homemade ropes from their bedsheets and tried to climb down with them.

Soon, the alley became a hazardous minefield of falling bodies.

To the firefighters' credit, they arrived within 30 seconds of the call, with 385 firefighters, 22 engine companies, and 11 ladder trucks in tow.

But even this firepower, no pun intended, was no match for the blaze.

For one, there were just so many bodies falling from the sky that the firefighters had trouble getting close enough to the building without being injured themselves.

And even when they did, their ladders weren't long enough to reach the top.

In fact, they could only get to the eighth floor about halfway up.

So by dawn, 119 of the 280 hotel guests were dead, making it the deadliest hotel fire in American history.

Oh, and remember those high school students?

Only 10 of the 40 survived.

William and Grace Weinkopf, the hotel's original owners, also died, like the Titanic's captain going down with the ship.

But they were right about that steel.

It didn't burn.

In fact, it held up so well that the building still exists today, not just as a relic, but as an active, functioning hotel.

You see, many renovations followed, of course.

In fact, the tragedy was a watershed moment for increased fire safety in hotels all over the country.

And naturally, the hotel had to do some, well, tasteful rebranding.

But five years later, in 1951, the Weinkopf reopened as the Peachtree Hotel.

Once again, its corridors filled with travelers, guests bustling on trips to the city, shoppers and sightseers, many with no knowledge of the horrors the halls had seen.

In 2007, the Weinkopf was renamed once more, becoming the Ellis Hotel, and remains so to this day.

But you can't rebrand tragedy.

Not if the ghosts can help it, that is.

Staff and guests alike have claimed to experience all sorts of paranormal phenomenon in the once smoke-filled corridors.

During renovations, for example, builders' tools would go missing.

Elevators open and close on their own accord.

Ghostly figures have been seen in the hallways and silhouetted in those high windows, their faces contorted in pain.

Sounds of people running and screaming echo through the halls.

Some guests have even awoken to the smell of smoke.

Or to something even more terrifying, the sound of the fire alarm, wailing unprompted, all throughout the night.

They never saw it coming.

When the guests of the Weinkopf Hotel checked into their rooms during that cold December day of 1946, they had no way of knowing that their stay would end in tragedy.

They unpacked their suitcases, slipped into a bed that wasn't their own, and went to sleep, only to wake up to unimaginable horror.

It's a story as American as apple pie in baseball.

That is the story of corporate pride and the death toll it leaves in its wake.

It ranks right up there with the Boston Molasses Flood and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

And it feels a lot like the myth of Icarus, a young man with lofty dreams who flies toward the sun only for the heat to melt his waxed wings and send him plummeting to his death.

I imagine William and Grace Weinkau felt something like Icarus that night, their skyscraper, too close to the sun.

Today, Atlanta is a thriving capital city.

It's known as one of the birthplaces of the civil rights movement, as well as being the literal birthplace of Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

From a thriving hip-hop scene and verdant city parks to a bustling culture of food, sports, and art, the place that was once called Marthasville has charged boldly toward the future.

And yet the past.

Can't help but linger.

One last thing.

Remember that ghostly fire alarm that still sounds in the wine cough on occasion?

It's often heard at a very specific time, just before 3 a.m.

Right when the 1946 fire was believed to have started.

I hope you enjoyed our stroll today through the ashes of Atlantis history.

But look, I get it.

Maybe all these ghost stories are a little hard to swallow.

After all, the proof is dubious.

But here's the thing: sometimes the scariest part of a ghost story isn't the ghosts at all, but the people.

And I have one more tale to prove it.

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Martin and Susan Defour had lived in the two-story country house for 25 years.

It sat six and a half miles from Atlanta on the road to Marietta.

Known as the Montgomery House, it was one of the oldest in the whole country.

It had been named for James Montgomery, the house's original owner and a veteran of the War of 1812.

Back in James's day, he had run a ferry service on the property, and when the Defours bought the place, they took the business over, renaming it Defours Ferry.

Soon enough, the couple became well-respected and beloved members of the community.

I have to wonder if Martin and Susan knew when they first moved in, though, that the house was haunted, or rather, that it would be someday.

Hauntings have a way of slipping through time, after all, but this house wouldn't be haunted by James Montgomery.

No, it would one day be haunted by the Defours themselves.

At 6 a.m.

on July 26th of 1879, a fellow by the name of Martin Walker was passing by the Defour residence and noticed something odd.

He noticed, well, nothing.

That is, no 73-year-old ferryman laboring in the yard, no 80-year-old housewife puttering around the stove.

Sure, 6 a.m.

is early, but the Defours were usually up and about by then, and Martin Walker knew that.

Some newspapers say that Walker was their grandson.

Others list him as the son-in-law.

Whatever the case may be, he was family, and so he went into the house to check on them.

What he found, though, would make anyone's blood run cold.

The two seniors lay in their beds, clearly not asleep.

Both had been brutally slaughtered with an axe.

Now, I'm not going to go into too many details because it was a pretty grisly scene, but the elders had been nearly decapitated by the blows.

Mercifully, it seems to have happened quickly.

At least, there was no sign of a struggle.

Police found the murder weapon tossed in the fireplace and covered in blood and ash.

As they searched for signs of a motive, the killing grew more and more mysterious.

For one, very little had been taken, so robbery seemed an unlikely motive.

The only things stolen had been some milk, some food, Mr.

Defour's wallet containing just a few scribbled notes, and Mr.

Defour's boots.

Those boots were later found tossed in the woods nearby.

All the couple's valuables were left untouched, including $18 in silver sitting right there in the bureau, the equivalent of about $500 today.

So, who had killed them?

And more importantly, why?

Well, the townsfolk had an idea.

You see, the day before their deaths, two travelers had asked the couple for a place to stay, but the Defours had turned them away.

So everyone figured that it must have been those drifters taking out their revenge.

Because of that, the case was immediately spun into anti-homeless propaganda.

There is nothing more dangerous, one newspaper published just four days after the killings, than this horde of ruffians that infests the byways of our land.

Predatory, hungry, and destitute, they skulk through our country like wolves.

As a result, a number of homeless individuals and travelers, primarily black men, mind you, were taken in for questioning.

But ultimately, no proof was found.

The story of the two travelers was certainly convenient, but it ultimately didn't seem to hold any water.

And so the hunt continued.

But here's the deal.

There's one vital detail that lifts this story out of the realm of regular, horrific true crime and into a whole new world of chilling.

You see, above the Defour's bedroom was a small attic, accessible only by a ladder.

It was rarely used by the family and typically kept closed.

But when the police inspected it after the killings, they found an unmade bed, fresh crumbs on the floor, and muddy footprints on the floor and windowsill.

There was even human excrement in the corner, as if someone had been stowed away up there for a while.

It seems that when Martin and Susan had gone to sleep on their final night, their killer was already with them, hovering just over their heads.

Yeah, I know.

I hate the thought of it too.

The investigators concluded that the murderer must have snuck in the day prior while the couple was out of the house.

Then they climbed the ladder and hid in the attic until nightfall when they climbed down and well, you get the idea.

It meant that the killer probably had prior knowledge of the house, knowing where to find the crawl space, making it likely that the killer was someone the Defours knew well.

But we'll never know for sure because the murderers were never found and the case remains unsolved to this day.

Now, if you think that they should send investigators back in to snoop around some more with modern forensics and DNA on their side, you're unfortunately out of luck.

You see, the house was torn down in August of 1879, just a short while after the murders.

And I don't blame them.

Some walls have simply seen too much to stay standing.

The house may be gone, and the centuries may have passed, but there may be one person still around who could help crack the case: Susan Defour herself.

You see, legend has it she wanders the former grounds of the old Montgomery house to this very day, looking for her husband, perhaps, or looking for the killer.

This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, and was written and researched by Jenna Rose Nethercott, with music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

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