Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mystery. Show all posts

Spooky Alton Bridge

The one-lane, wooden-floored "Old Alton Bridge," as it is known, was constructed in 1884 to connect the Texas towns of Lewisville and Alton in Denton County. It well served the communities and surrounding farms until it was replaced by a new bridge in 2002. My family and I lived just a few miles from the old bridge and before it was replaced, often drove over the creaking, rather scary structure to visit friends on the other side of the creek. Although the bridge shaved three miles off the closest alternate route from our friend's house to ours, I rarely drove over it after dark.

For several miles the little 2-lane black-top road on either side of the bridge goes through an isolated area with no houses and no street lights to break up the dark. Large trees grow in thick profusion on both sides of the roadway. Very pretty in the daytime, very spooky in the dark. The bridge itself takes courage to drive an auto across. The bed is made of wooden boards laid crosswise and you have to carefully steer your car to keep your tires on the thick lengthwise boards. While you cross, the bridge creaks and pops, the boards moan and you see water rushing by in the creek below through spaces in broken slats. It's impossible to not hold your breath and clench your hands on the steering wheel until you reach the far side. Unsettling in the daytime, positively unnerving in the dark.

The bridge the morning after my
spooky encounter.
One cold winter night, for some illogical reason, I dared to drive that spooky route. As if to prove to myself that I'm not afraid of the dark, I stopped my car on the road just before reaching the edge of the bridge. As usual, there were no other cars in sight and it was extremely dark as even the moonlight was blocked out by the overhanging trees. I turned off the headlights and rolled down the window, but even though my car was rather new and the engine was very quiet, its hum was all I could hear so I turned the key off. The silence in that blackness was total with none of the normal sounds you would expect to hear; no birds chirping, no dogs barking in the distance, no traffic noise on some distant road, no nothing. My senses told me something was not right.

Suddenly, there came a noise from the woods and it was very close! It sounded like some animal, maybe a coyote or a feral pig skulking through leaves. It was just a short sound and before I could react, all was quiet again. I looked as closely into the woods as I could, all my senses on high alert, but for a number of seconds there was still no sound. The seconds seemed to be minutes until with no warning, I heard a sound like a twig breaking under a footstep and then a rustling of leaves several times in procession. It sounded for all the world like somebody, a 2-legged somebody, was slowly walking through the leaves in that black jungle. I didn't wait to see if I could find out what it was. It took about 2 seconds for me to start the car, roll up the window, put it in Drive and get the heck on down the road!

I drove onto the bridge and didn't take my foot off the gas even where it is usually prudent to slow to a crawl to be sure your car is situated correctly on the boards for the drive across. Fortunately, I made it over safely, fearing at any moment that something, man or beast, would pop up in front of me at the end of the bridge. That was the last time I ever drove that route after dark. I decided to see what I could find about that bridge and the area around it. I figured it was just too spooky to not have some kind of history associated with it. I figured right.

 
In the early 1860's as the Civil War raged, a bunch of area cowboys took it upon themselves to punish a slave goat-herder named Jack Kendall for some offense which has been lost to history. They tied one end of a rope around his neck and the other end around a sturdy tree limb  of a large oak tree which was growing next to the creek right where the Alton Bridge would later be built. They drug him to the top of the creek bank and threw him out toward the water. It was a long fall and the rope used was thinner than it should have been so when poor Jack Kendall hit the end of the rope, his head was severed and his body dropped into the creek. Stories of a headless apparition wandering up and down the creek, apparently in search of his missing head, have been told for over 150 years now.

 The story which has taken hold and gained the most notoriety though is of Oscar Washburn, an African-American man who gained a reputation in the 1930's as an honest, dependable business man who raised and sold goats and goat products. He and his wife and children lived in a small cabin in the woods a short distance from the Alton bridge. He was popular with many of the locals for the quality of the goat meat, milk, cheese and hides he sold at a very reasonable price. To help the unfamiliar easily find him, he hung a big sign on the end of the bridge which read, "This way to the Goatman." Unfortunately, this popularity came to the attention of the local Ku Klux Klan who didn't take kindly to a black man taking away business from other local goat raisers.


The exact spot where Oscar Washburn was
hung over the side of the bridge.
One dark night in 1938, with their car's headlights off, the Klansmen drove across the bridge to the Goatman's little cabin and dragged him away from his wailing wife and crying children. They took him back to the middle of the bridge to a noose they had prepared ahead of time and after roughly slipping it over his head, flung the pleading Goatman over. Much to their surprise, they heard a watery splash below the bridge and when they looked over the side, they were shocked to see an empty noose and no sign of their victim.

 The Night Riders split up and quickly ran to both ends of the bridge where they scrambled down the embankments to the water's edge. After frantically searching for half an hour with no sign of their intended prey, they returned to the Washburn residence. After a quick search proved he was not there, the men barricaded the front door and with mother and children huddled together inside, the cabin was set on fire. They hoped the screams of his family would bring the Goatman into the open where they intended to capture him, securely tie him up and throw him alive onto the raging inferno, but their plan didn't work. The screams of the innocent mother and children were silenced as the burning walls crumbled.


Oscar Washburn was never seen again. Some believe that just like poor Jack Kendall, the Goatman's head popped off that night when he was hung and his body was washed away by the quickly flowing waters after it dropped through the noose. Others believe he survived the botched hanging and ran far away from the area, leaving behind his poor family to suffer a horrible death. To this day, what is certain though are the eerie and strange happenings on and around the Alton bridge.


Many say the unforgiving spirit of the Goatman still haunts these woods. Locals warn to not cross the bridge with headlights turned off for if you do, you will surely be met on the other side by none other than the vengeful Goatman himself. There are persistent reports of a ghostly apparition herding a bunch of almost transparent goats being seen in the dark on the road leading from the bridge. The apparition and goats disappear as quickly as they appear. Others have seen a pair of unholy red, glowing eyes staring at them from the tree's or have glimpsed the fleeting image of a large goat-headed-man-beast in the shadows of the forest which is usually accompanied by the revolting smell of rotten flesh. Often there are tales of unexplained noises such as hoof beats of goats running across the bridge, loud splashing in the waters below the bridge or a low non-human growl coming from the trees near the bridge.

There has been a rash of documented cases by the police where people have vanished with no trace around this seemingly cursed bridge. In the 1950's, a local high school boy and his girlfriend were reported missing when they failed to return from a Friday night date. The boy's car was found the next morning parked in the woods beside the bridge with both front doors open. They have still never been found and the case is a total mystery. On November 15, 1967, a Ford Mustang was found by police parked at the end of the bridge. They eventually found out who owned the car, but the person has never been found.

In 2002, a new road and bridge was built to replace the old one. The original Alton bridge is still there, but since then, the odd happenings and reports of strange apparitions and unexplained phenomena seem to have decreased some. Daring teenagers like to hang out there at night in groups, spray-painting graffiti and trying to scare each other. But even the most daring teenagers do not go there at night alone.

 I don't know what I heard the night I stopped on that dark, lonely road. I didn't stick around trying to find out. One thing I do know for sure though, it wasn't just my imagination...something was out there.




 

Mystery of Leather Man

Years ago, people were much more accepting of the odd ones among us, the mysterious ones, the different ones, the ones who we now say "aren't quiet right" and call upon the police to remove. In the early 1860's, just such a person made his first appearance in Connecticut and New York - the legendary Leather Man.

Historical picture of Leather Man
A wandering vagrant started making an appearance in certain towns and settlements  in 1862. He rarely spoke, never saying more than a couple of words at a time and even then it was mostly in French with an English word or two thrown in. He never told anyone his name and when someone asked about his background or what he was doing, he would mumble an unintelligible word or two and quickly move on. Just as peculiar was his clothing; dressed from head to toe in crude pieces of thick leather which had been hand-stitched together with leather thongs. It was a suit of clothes that weighed over 60 pounds, yet he wore it all year without fail, in summer heat and the bitter cold of winter. For lack of a better name, everyone began calling him "Leather Man."

Over time, people began noticing this strange man would return every 34 days. As a matter of fact, he would return to the same exact place within 10 minutes of the same time he had been there exactly 34 days earlier. No matter if storm, rain or snow, his appearances were on such a consistent schedule that you could almost set your watch by it. Eventually the more curious began following him and finally pieced together that Leather Man walked a circuit of 365 miles, always traveling clockwise. For his nightly shelter, he had a number of small caves which he had outfitted with a circle of rocks to enclose a fire and leaves and small twigs for a bed. Every morning before leaving, he would gather an armload of wood and leave it inside the cave where it would remain dry and ready for his next time there. 


Leather Man's route
As his appearances continued, many people took it upon themselves to feed and assist the harmless, always smiling odd man. With almost the exact time known when he would be in a particular spot, housewives would have a home-cooked meal prepared for him. Leather Man always accepted food and water with a smile, a small little bow of gratitude and grunt of thanks before hurrying on his way to keep to his schedule. Some of the men offered tobacco and matches which he also accepted in the same manner. Several school houses along his route would award their "Student of the Month" with the privilege of carrying a meal out to Leather Man as he passed by. It became a mark of pride among the students as to who would get to hand the meal to him every 34 days. However, he always refused money, alcohol or clothing and he never took up anyone on an offer of accommodation in their home for the night. 

In the winter of 1888, a severe blizzard struck Maine with day after day of below-zero weather and multiple feet of snow. Through it all, Leather Man continued walking his route, but for the first time in 26 years, he fell behind his schedule. With what was considered super-human will and endurance, he trudged through the howling, freezing winds and fought through the mounds of snow and arrived within a few hours of his usual time. People begged him to come in and take shelter at their fire, but he would just shake his head and kept plowing forward. After the storm had passed, he had completed his journey in 36 days rather than the usual 34 and people noticed he had a large black spot on his lip, a sure sign of frostbite. The Connecticut Humane Society heard about it and had him arrested and taken to a hospital for treatment. When his guard briefly turned his back and before a doctor could see him, Leather Man made his escape and resumed his walk through the woods. Other lawmen along his route refused to arrest him as he had never broken any laws and from then on he was left alone to continue his curious habit. 

One of Leather Man's caves
Leather Man maintained his punctual pacing and strange practices for 27 years. On March 24, 1889, he didn't make his expected appearance in Ossining, New York and people became worried. A search party found him dead in his cave where he had spent the night before. No foul play was evident and it was thought he had died of natural causes. The hardship and exposure he had suffered in the previous year's blizzard was thought to be a contributing factor in his death. He was buried in a shallow grave in a simple pine box just off Route 9 outside of Ossining. A collection was taken and a headstone was placed at his grave.

In 2011, Route 9 was scheduled to be widened so Leather Man was exhumed to be moved further away from the road and into a nearby cemetery. When his grave was dug up though, only a few coffin nails were found with no sign of his body. A new pine box was made and the nails along with some of the dirt from his first grave were placed in the new coffin which was buried in the cemetery. A new headstone was erected which simply says, "Leather Man."

Today there are legends about his true identity, but nobody has obtained any proof and he officially still remains unknown. There are stories about treasures supposedly buried in his caves, but the caves are well known and many people have dug in and around them with no treasure found. There have also been numerous reports over the years that his ghost continues walking along his trail, something he is damned to do for all eternity. Some have reported mysterious lights glowing in his caves at night, but actually, more than 150 years after his first appearance, only a huge mystery remains. Who was Leather Man? Where did he come from? Where was he and what did he do before his appearance in 1862? Why did he lead such a self-imposed solitary life? Why the particular route he traveled? Why the tight schedule? And why did he always wear only leather?

Fake Jesse or Real Jesse?

Death photo of Jesse James or Charley Bigelow?
According to a lot of seemingly knowledgeable people, Jesse James the outlaw did not die at the hands of Bob Ford in St. Joseph, Missouri on April 3, 1882. Often referred to as "America's Robin Hood," the rumors and stories that it was all staged for Jesse to escape his past and begin a new life are still being debated today. So where do these folks believe he lived out his life? In the small Texas town of Granbury.

Most know the story of how Jesse supposedly died. While at his home in Missouri, Bob Ford and his brother came to visit their friend Jesse. Unbeknownst to Jesse though, the Fords had entered into an agreement with the governor to kill Jesse for a pardon of their crimes and the reward money. Jesse removed his gun belt and turning his back to his "friends," stepped up on a chair to straighten a picture hanging on the wall. Bob quickly drew his revolver and shot the unarmed Jesse in the head and then ran from the house.


Members of Jesse's family, his friends, former members of Quantrill's Guerrillas, the doctor who prepared the body for burial, and a few citizens who had recently been robbed by Jesse all identified the body as Jesse James.  But if his death was staged, would the tight-knit James family members say it wasn't really Jesse laying there in that coffin? Would members of Quantrill's Guerrillas, men who had taken an oath to protect each other, men who had ridden with Jesse and had suffered together and fought side-by-side in some of the most ferocious, bloody, in-close and hand-to-hand battles fought during America's most in-humane war, turn on one of their brothers? The doctor who examined the body told Jesse's son that he knew it wasn't really Jesse because he had examined him 6 months earlier and found he had cataracts in his eyes. The body buried as Jesse did not have any eye problems. 


What about the citizens who had recently been robbed by Jesse? In the area at this time was a man by the name of Charley Bigelow who looked so much like Jesse James that even Jesse said "he could be my twin." Bigelow was supposedly an undercover detective for the Pinkerton Agency, but was actually committing robberies of travelers and small stores. Trying to throw off the law, he often would say, "You've just been robbed by Jesse James!" before riding off. Before fingerprints or DNA was even dreamed about, a mistaken identity is totally understandable

Many researchers claim it was Bigelow who was laid to rest under the tombstone engraved with the name Jesse James. Within weeks, Bob Ford was granted his pardon by the governor and the reward money? Well, the story has always been told that the governor got the majority of that $10,000 and Ford had to be grateful just to have gotten his pardon.

Headstone in Granbury for J. Frank Dalton or 
Jesse James? Writing at the bottom of the 
stone states, "Supposedly killed in 1882"
The story goes that friends and family members helped Jesse escape to South America until the news of his death became widely known and accepted in America. At that point, he came back and changing names as often as he changed his underwear, safely lived a law-abiding life mostly in Oklahoma and Texas. For a short time, he served as a sheriff in Oklahoma Territory and even as a Texas Ranger. In old age, he finally took the name J. Frank Dalton which is the name he died with. Why J. Frank Dalton? Dalton was his mother's maiden name and Frank was his beloved brother. The "J" was, of course, for Jesse.

   Jesse, or "J. Frank Dalton," began telling stories shortly before his death, of the exploits he had undertaken in his younger days. In many of these stories he included facts that only someone who had actually been there would know. When he died, the undertaker who performed the autopsy confirmed that J. Frank Dalton had the exact same wounds in the exact same places as Jesse James was known to have. He also confirmed that Mr. Dalton had suffered for years from failing eyesight due to cataracts.


Visitors to his grave often leave small tokens, mostly
coins, bullets, and whiskey.
 

Could Jesse have pulled off one of the greatest hoaxes in American history by faking his own death? Is the real Jesse James buried in an unremarkable grave in little Granbury, Texas? According to some historians and J. Frank Dalton's headstone, perhaps he did.

Old Rip, The Miracle Horned Toad

The Eastland Courthouse constructed in 1928
In the Eastland, Texas courthouse, protected by 2 thick layers of glass and a uniformed guard, a Texas legend lies in state. Resting on velvet and white satin, he was once famous around the country. Fans from near and far arrived daily to see him and even a U.S. president had a personal meeting with him. Today, it's usually just the rare curious visitor who stops by and every now and then, a tour bus of senior citizens will pull over for the occupants to make their way to the viewing area. Mostly, he lies forgotten and ignored. But there was a time...

In 1897, the cornerstone of Eastland County's new courthouse was scheduled to be dedicated. As the ceremony was underway, Justice of the Peace Earnest Wood, who was also a member of the band on hand that day, noticed his son was playing with a horned toad, a common and favorite creature in Texas at that time. Old Earnest decided it would be funny to place the toad in the cornerstone so that's exactly what he did just before it was sealed up tight. Several witnesses saw him do it and a good chuckle was had by all. For the next 31 years people would pass by the courthouse, point and say, "There's a horned toad snoozing in that building."

In 1928, the population of Eastland county had grown bigger and the courthouse had grown older. Money was raised and plans drawn up to replace it with a bigger, modern building. Stories were going around that horned toads could go into hibernation and live for years without food or water. Some even said they could stop breathing until conditions turned favorable. Arguments raged with others swearing talk of horned toads going into suspended animation was just old wives tales. 

On February 18th, the old structure had been demolished down to the cornerstone. On that day, over 3,000 people were on hand anxious to witness the opening. As they looked on in suspense, the block was cleared and the covering removed. Judge E. S. Pritchard removed some other items which had been sealed inside - a bible, several newspapers, a book. He then reached into the very bottom of the stone and pulled out something that looked like a dust covered piece of dark brown tree bark. It was the desiccated toad. The poor creature was handed to Eugene Day, a leading citizen of the town. He turned around and handed the stiff-as-a-board remains to Frank Singleton, the local Methodist pastor. After examining it, the preacher handed it back to Judge Pritchard who then held it up by the tail so everyone in the crowd could see.

A Texas Horned Toad
Some were disappointed, some smiled and said, "I told you so" and a few of the young children started to cry. But as everyone began to leave, people in the front gasped and someone shouted, "It twitched! That thing's alive!" As people turned to look, they were astounded to see the dried-up animal wake up from its 31-year nap and wriggle back to life!

The miracle horned toad became an instant sensation. He was dubbed Rip Van Winkle, which of course was quickly shortened to Old Rip, and travelers from miles away came in droves to see the animal that refused to die. The local veterinary made sure Old Rip was fed and watered and folks made sure he had a good home in the display window of a store on the town square. Eventually, the demand to see him was so great that he went on a tour of the United States - Dallas, St. Louis, New York City and Washington, D.C. When he arrived in the nation's capitol, President Calvin Coolidge requested he be brought to the White House where he could see the country's most famous animal in person.

Old Rip returned to Eastland after the tour but sadly, after 31 years encased in an airtight stone with no food or water, he was on borrowed time. On January 19, 1929, Old Rip passed away. An autopsy was performed and he was found to have contracted pneumonia and drowned due to water in his lungs. 

Old Rip lying in state in his custom-made casket
The people of Eastland were unwilling to let Old Rip go so they had him embalmed, placed in a small casket and put on display in a window of the new courthouse. For years, people continued to come to see the diminutive miracle animal. In 1962, Gubernatorial candidate John Connally stopped in Eastland on a campaign tour around the state. Like all politicians, he took every opportunity to have his name and picture in the public's face so he requested and was given permission to have his picture taken while holding Eastland's most famous resident. He was indelicately holding up Old Rip by a back leg when it broke off. The news reporters were amused, but the people of Eastland were not. Old Rip was placed back in his little casket and that was the last time anyone has been allowed to touch him.


Closeup of Old Rip




In 1955, the legend of Old Rip inspired cartoonist Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese to create the classic cartoon, One Froggy Evening. It tells the story of of a frog who is freed from a building's cornerstone and sings ragtime jazz when no one is watching. That cartoon became so popular it morphed into Michigan J. Frog, the official mascot of the Warner Brothers Television Network.




Michigan J. Frog

Unsolved Mystery of the The Sarah Joe



Scott Moorman
Scott Moorman was born in 1952 and grew up in the San Fernando Valley. He watched the TV series Adventures in Paradise as a child and started telling his parents that one day he was going to move to Hawaii. He married young and had a son, but his dream of living in Hawaii never left so when Scott and his young wife called it quits in 1975, he fulfilled his dream by moving to the small community of Nahiku on the east coast of Maui. 

Nahiku was a town of native Hawaiians and a growing population of "haoles," mostly Caucasian refugees looking for their version of paradise - hippies, earth mamas, nature freaks and Vietnam vets trying to forget. Women and men both wore their hair long, grew and smoked dope, lived with each other with no thought of being married and partied way more than they worked. 

The natives didn't take to them as a group, but a few of the new-comers, including Scott, made an effort to get to know them, learned to speak the pidgin-English they spoke, learned their customs and so, gradually, some of the haoles became at least casual friends with some of the natives. The locals called the remote area where they lived "inside" and the populated areas, like Hana, "outside." After a while, Scott and the other newcomers came to see it the same way. Scott went back to California once, for his son's birthday and to see his parents. They asked him to stay, but he told them he couldn't see living anywhere else now. He had to go back to Nahiku, he had to go back home. It was the last time they would see him.

On February 11, 1979, Scott and four friends, Peter Hanchett, Patrick Woesner, Benjamin Kalama, and Ralph Malaiakini, were working constructing a house, but the ocean was smooth and the sky almost cloudless. According to Hawaiian time, things happen when they happen - "yes" means probably later, "maybe" is a nice way of saying probably not, and if the weather is good, then work goes into the later category. The 5 men decided to work later and go fishing now. 

They drove the 7 miles to Hana and borrowed a boat, a 17-foot  Boston Whaler, from an acquaintance. The 85-horsepower outboard needed new spark plugs so the 5 men bought the plugs and installed them. They also purchased beer, soft drinks, snacks, and filled a large cooler with ice for the fish they hoped to be bringing back. 

The Alenuihaha channel between the Big Island and Maui is perhaps the roughest and most dangerous waters in Hawaii. Flowing next to Mauna Loa, the world's largest volcano, the water is 17,000 feet deep and has strong surface currents moving swiftly to the southwest. On this day, a low pressure system had formed near the islands and it intensified as it approached the Alenuihaha channel, but since Hana received no television stations and the radio stations issued weather reports mostly for the western side of Maui, boaters were accustomed to heading out to sea without consulting weather reports beforehand. They simply played the weather by eye. The day Scott and his friends decided to go fishing, the bay had barely a ripple and the sky was void of all clouds except a few little stray puffs. By 10:00 that morning, the men had the boat in the ocean and motored out of the bay. They were heading straight into an enduring mystery which will likely never be solved.

By noon, just 2 short hours after the men put to sea, the wind had shifted to the north and picked up considerable speed. Two hours later, gale-force winds were whipping up large waves in the Alenuihaha channel and a torrential downpour had begun. Residents said later the storm was the worst one they had seen in 50 years. A good portion of Hana was flooded and a number of houses and businesses were damaged by the high winds. Three boats out fishing that day made it back to Hana just as the storm got really bad, but the Sarah Joe wasn't one of them.

The Coast Guard was notified at 5:00 PM that the boat and men were missing. A helicopter and a large fixed-wing plane were dispatched to search for the men, but the winds were high, the ocean boiling and the visibility was very poor. One searcher said the weather was so bad, "they could have been just 50 feet in front of us and we wouldn't have seen them." More planes and helicopters were dispatched to the hunt. Eventually, over the next 5 days, 44 planes and boats covered more than 56,000 square miles of ocean, but they found not a trace of the Sarah Joe or her occupants. After 5 days, the official search was called off.

The families, friends, and neighbors didn't give up. One of the men who continued the search stated, "These were young, strong, healthy guys. They were experienced fishermen and good swimmers. They were all capable and had each other to rely on. If someone had found debris, we would have agreed they didn't live through the storm, but nothing was found - nothing. And so we felt there was still a chance they were afloat and alive." A fund drive was begun and over $50,000 was raised. It was used to hire commercial boats and private planes to join the volunteers in an extended search. Dozens and dozens of volunteers combed the isolated south shore of Maui and the Hamakua coast of the Big Island in case the boat or it's crew had managed to land there. Absolutely nothing was found that could possibly be related to the Sarah Joe or the men who vanished with her. A full week after the Coast Guard had given up the search, the volunteers admitted they had no idea what had happened to Scott and his friends. While in the area, commercial and private fishermen and boaters kept their eyes open for any sign of what happened to the Sarah Joe for months after, but no trace was found.

Exactly one year after they disappeared, a memorial service was held for the five men who had vanished so suddenly, so thoroughly, it was like the sea had opened its mouth and swallowed them up.

The area southwest of the Hawaiian Islands is a vast expanse of empty open ocean stretching for more than 2,300 miles. At that point a small atoll, a group of uninhabited little islands named the Taongi Atoll, is encountered. Considered a part of the Marshall Isles, the islands were little more than strips of arid land slightly higher than the ocean. A few scrub plants have found a foothold on a couple of the strips of land, but none of them are palatable for humans. There is no fresh water. The only inhabitants ever recorded had been a few Japanese soldiers whom the Allies wiped out in 1944 during WWII.  The atoll is far from the shipping lanes and the nearest land is over 200 miles further west. The area is so isolated, it was under serious consideration as the site of atomic bomb testing. This is no tropical island paradise for anyone.

On September 10, 1988, marine biologist John Naughton and 4 other men went ashore one of those little islands looking for green sea turtles and nesting sea birds. They had been hired by the government of the Marshal Islands to find a suitable site for a wildlife sanctuary.  The team had been on the land for less than 30 minutes when they spotted something sticking up out of the sand. Upon closer inspection, it was the battered fiberglass hull of a Boston Whaler with the letters "HA" painted on the side. Naughton, a resident of Maui, Hawaii, knew those letters meant the boat was registered in Hawaii. After clearing away some of the sand, the letters S, a, h and j became visible. Ironically, Naughton had been one of the volunteers who had so diligently searched for the Sarah Joe almost 10 years ago. He knew what they had finally found. There were no traces of the five men; no remains, no notes, no clothing. Naughton and his crew decided to scour the whole little island, hoping against hope to find survivors even though nobody could have remained alive on this sand bar for long.
The Sarah Joe after she was found and pulled from the sand.


About 100 yards further on, the men came across a crude wooden cross marking a shallow grave. A cairn of flattened coral stones had been fashioned to mark the grave and on top of these stones was a single human jaw bone. One rock held down a sheaf of partially burned papers. There was no writing on the sheets of paper. Carefully unstacking several of the stones, the men could see more human bones underneath. They put the stones they had disturbed back in place and stopped. Naughton later stated, "We didn't dig up the grave. We could see it was a Christian burial and the Marshallese men with us were somewhat superstitious. We immediately saw there were fillings in the teeth and we could see it was not a very old burial just by the fact the bones were not very bleached. Also, you could see the area had been washed by really high storm waves sometime in the recent past so the grave had to have been made after that."

After completing a search of the whole island and finding nothing else, their discovery was reported to the Marshallese authorities. The U.S. Coast Guard was informed and they sent two forensic experts from the Army Central Identification Lab in Honolulu to see if the remains could be identified. When they arrived, additional bones were discovered in the grave, but a complete skeleton was not recovered. Bringing the bones back to Hawaii, they soon proved by dental records and DNA to be those of one man, Scott Moorman. The cause of death could not be determined. Two months after they were found, Scott's family held a memorial service and buried his remains in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Along the sandbar where the grave of Scott Moorman was found.
Family members of the other 4 men hired a private detective who tried for a number of months to determine what happened to the men still lost. He took a crew to the Taongi Atoll where they once again scoured the spit of land and dove in the lagoon looking for clues. The outboard engine of the Sarah Joe was found underwater wedged in the coral reef. Digging and sifting the sand, they found a handful of human bones a few yards further down from the grave site. Nothing more was discovered. The private detective and crew declared they were absolutely positive there was nothing more to find. Forensic work later determined the bones were more of Scott Moorman. 

So what really happened to the Sarah Joe and the 5 friends who went out in her that fateful day? Had she been floating around in that vast expanse of empty ocean for almost 10 years, her crew slowly dying one by one of hunger and thirst? There was only one narrow entrance through the reef and islands where a boat can enter the lagoon of 
 the Taongi Atoll. Did the Sarah Joe, against all odds, just happen to float through that narrow channel to land on an interior sandbar or could she have been guided by someones hand? What happened to the 4 men who have never been found? All sailors know, the sea rarely gives up her dead. Who buried Scott Moorman? How did he come to be freshly buried at least 9 years after his disappearance? What were those partially burned sheets of paper on his grave? Why was his jawbone on top of the grave and his other bones buried? So many unanswered questions, but it all remains a mystery.
 

Sex, Murder, and Mystery on the Island of Floreana

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude;
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
To whom I may whisper - solitude is sweet.
William Cowper, "Retirement"

Dore Strauch was a teacher who was convinced she was meant for greater things than a life as the wife of a cruel man and working beneath a headmaster who was twice her age. Dr. Friedrich Ritter, a dentist, desired to map the human brain and felt civilization had nothing more to offer him. As fortune would have it, Dore met Friedrich when she came to him for some dental work and in 1929, they left their spouses and ran away to Floreana, a remote, lonely island in the Galapagos, a place where the authority of the state ended and the law of necessity reigned. When the pair came ashore, the island was deserted, having successfully resisted several attempts at colonization. There simply wasn't enough fresh water to support a colony of people.

Dore and Friedrich
Before leaving, to prevent dental problems, Friedrich pulled all his teeth and made a set of metal false teeth. Some reports state Dore also had her teeth removed and the two shared the one set of false teeth, but no proof of that has been found. Once they arrived on Floreana, they immediately removed all of their clothing and lived from then on as nudist, only putting clothes on when visitors sometimes came to their island. They soon built a hut of corrugated iron in the green crater of an extinct volcano and cultivated an acre of land, successfully raising a nice garden from which they harvested almost all of their food sustaining them as vegetarians.
 
Friedrich and Dore at home on Floreana
The press got word of this modern-day Adam and Eve, the rugged doctor and his lover, living naked and alone on a far off island. They became international celebrities, exactly the opposite of what they had wanted. For several years, people would come to visit them, arriving every few weeks. The couple complained bitterly about how often people would come and thus, how often they would have to wear clothes. Occasionally a few of the visitors came with the intention of staying on the island, but invariably, the harsh conditions of the island and the hard work it took to survive shattered their dreams of idyllic living on a tropical isle and they all left when the next boat stopped by.

Margret, Heinz and a pet cat at their home on Floreana
In 1932, Heinz Wittmer arrived on the island with his pregnant wife Margret and their teenage son. Heinz was seeking a place far away from post-war Germany which was in the midst of a severe depression with 30% unemployment, rioting in the streets, and the rise of the Nazi Party. Unlike the others though, the Wittmer family were knowledgable, independent, and determined and willing to endure the hardships. They stayed on the other side of the island away from Friedrich and Dore, making their home for a while in a cave. The families visited each other occasionally, but the women didn't like each other so they mostly stayed to themselves and that's the way they both preferred. When their son Rolf was born in the cave house, it was the first birth ever recorded on Floreana Island.

The Baroness, Philippson and Lorrenz
The next year brought unfortunate changes. A party of four people arrived and declared their intention to stay. They were led by "Baroness" Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet, an attractive young Austrian. The other 3 people were her two lovers, Robert Philippson and Rudolf Lorrenz, and Manuel Valdvieso, a handyman who had been hired to do all of the work. Manuel built a hut on the beach for them to live in which the Baroness called "Hacienda Paradise." She began to call herself the "Empress of Floreana" and announced plans to build a grand hotel which would be built and operated for her rich friends and other millionaires. She managed to get her plans announced by the international media and soon there were many more yachts anchoring in the little bay. The Baroness began inviting yacht captains and select male passengers into her bed and eventually seduced the Governor of Galapagos. Yachts began to go out of their way to visit the island of Floreana. With the Baroness' scandalous living arrangements and rumors of her seemingly insatiable sexual appetite, everyone sailing the Pacific wanted to be able to boast of an encounter with her.

Cover of a magazine story about the Baroness and her life on Floreana
The Wittmer family, who by now had managed to build a house and were actually doing rather well given the difficult conditions, lived on the other end of the island and didn't associate much with the Baroness and her entourage. Friedrich though made no effort to conceal his hatred of the Baroness and her friends and "visitors" and plans for a grand hotel. He blamed her for totally upsetting the lifestyle he and Dore had worked so hard to establish.

Eventually, Rudolf Lorrenz, one of the Baroness' original lovers, evidently grew tired of his lady's penchant to bed others and heated arguments began taking place in their camp. Lorrenz began visiting the Wittmer family, sometimes staying for days until the Baroness herself would come to fetch him back. A drought occurred making fresh water extremely scarce and the pressure apparently drove Friedrich and Dore into bitter arguments between themselves. The Wittmer family, Friedrich and Dore became even more upset with the Baroness and her friends when she started badmouthing them to the international press which published every word whether true or not. For some unknown reason, Philippson stole the Ritter's donkey one night and turned it lose in the Wittmer's garden where it proceeded to destroy a good portion of it. When Heinz found it the next morning, he thought it was a feral donkey and shot it.

The Baroness and Philippson on Floreana
On March 27, 1934, the Baroness and her lover Philippson disappeared, never to be seen again. When questioned later, Margret Wittmer said the Baroness had come to their home one morning and said some friends had arrived in their yacht and were going to take her and Philippson to Tahiti that very day. She also told Margret that whatever they were not taking with them was being left to Lorrenz. But neither the Baroness or Philippson ever appeared in Tahiti or anywhere else. Lorrenz claimed to know nothing about it and neither he, the handy-man Valdvieso, nor Friedrich or Dore saw any kind of boat in the harbor the whole week in question. Almost every possession of the Baroness and Philippson were left behind, including luggage and other items of a personal nature that the Baroness would have taken with her even for a short trip. Relations between the Wittmer's and Friedrich and Dore became even more strained when they told people of their belief that Lorrenz killed the Baroness and Philippson, burned their bodies and the Wittmer's helped him cover it up. The Wittmer's talked of Friedrich's dislike of the Baroness and claimed Lorrenz and he had suspiciously split the items left behind by the disappeared couple.

The handy-man Valdvieso convinced the very next boat that stopped to take him off the island. It is assumed he apparently escaped back to wherever the Baroness had found him.

The bodies of Lorrenz and Nuggerud
Soon thereafter, Lorrenz convinced a Norwegian fisherman named Nuggerud to take him to Santa Cruz and then to San Cristobal where he could catch the ferry to Guayaquil. They landed in Santa Cruz, bought supplies, set sail for San Cristobal and then vanished. A number of months later, the mummified, desiccated bodies of both men were found on Marchena Island, a parcel of land in the northern part of the Archipelago which is not on the route to or anywhere near Santa Cruz or San Cristobal.  There is still no clue as to how they got there.

In November of that same year, Friedrich Ritter died. The official reason was listed as food poisoning from eating a badly preserved chicken. What makes this interesting is the fact that Friedrich was an avowed vegetarian who had not been seen to eat meat of any kind for years. Plus, he was by then an experienced veteran of island living and perfectly capable of knowing when meat had gone bad. Margret Wittmer claimed that Dore had poisoned him as his treatment of her had become worse during the last year. Both women claimed to have been by his side when Friedrich died, but their accounts could not be any different.
Dore Strauch: “Suddenly he opened his great blue eyes and stretched his arms towards me. His glance was joyously tranquil. He seemed actually to say to me: “I go; but promise you will not forget what we have lived for.” It seemed to be as if he would draw me with him. Then he sank back, and I began to caress his forehead tenderly. He became quite still, and that was death.
Margret Wittmer: “Whenever she came near him, he would make feeble movements as if to hit or kick her. He looked up at Dore, his eyes gleaming with hate. [He] wrote his last sentence: “I curse you with my dying breath.” His eyes filled with a wild feverish flame. Dore shrieked, and drew back in horror. Then he collapsed soundlessly, falling back on the pillows. He had gone.
Three dead and two missing in the space of a few months on a barely populated island captured even more world-wide attention than the Baroness' antics. The "Galapagos Affair" as it became called, has confounded historians, police, and armchair detectives since 1934. The Baroness and Philippson have never been found. The mummified bodies of Lorrenz and Nuggerud ending up on Marchena Island is still a complete mystery. Friedrich's death is still officially listed as an accidental food poisoning despite all the raised eyebrows and questions. The Wittmers remained on Floreana and became wealthy years later when the Galapagos became a tourist destination. Until she died in 2000, still living on Floreana Island at the age of 96, Margret never changed her story that the Baroness and Philippson left for Tahiti on a yacht. She often hinted she knew more than she was telling, but no one knows whether she really did or was just having fun with the tourists and interviewers. Dore eventually put on clothes and returned to Germany where she wrote a book about the whole affair. It wasn't a big success and it didn't settle any of the mysteries, but it proved interesting due to the stories of the hardships she and Friedrich endured and for details of the sordid goings-on that took place after the Baroness took up residence on the island. In the book she was adamant that Lorrenz killed the Baroness and Philippson, but she offered no proof other than her "gut feelings." 

No one is alive today who actually have knowledge of all that happened. Some mysteries, it seems, are destined to never be solved. And isn't that what makes the world just a bit more interesting?

Route 66 - The Mystery Stone

If you follow the pre-1937 route of Route 66 south of Albuquerque, you will pass through sparsely beautiful country with a number of old towns and pueblo's. Past Los Pallidas, Isleta, Isleta Pueblo and Bosque Farms, you will come to the town of Los Lunas, home to almost 25,000 people. There are a few Route 66 reminders along here, but nothing really of note. However, just a few miles west of town, you will enter the Rio Puerco Valley. Famous in archaeological circles for being home to more than 10,000 historical sites dating back to the Puebloan cultures of the ancient Anasazi Indians, it also contains more than 50 volcanoes, one of which is Cabezon Peak which climbs to 8,000 feet high.

The Mystery Stone
Just 18 miles beyond Los Lunas on the western side of the Rio Grande River is New Mexico's Mystery Stone. Also referred to as Inscription Rock, it is an ancient petroglyph which has cast doubt on whether Christopher Columbus or the Norse were actually the first explorers in America. Although nobody could read the words on it at that time, the local Indians back in the mid-1800's claimed the rock had been there since before their ancestors came to the area hundreds of years before. The name of the mountain had been handed down to them from the ancient one's - "Mystery Mountain."

The rock is located on what the locals still call Mystery Mountain or Hidden Mountain as it is named on some maps. Near the bottom of the 5,500 foot hill on the right side of a mound of lava is a large, flat-faced boulder weighing approximately 100 tons. Nine rows of characters or letters resembling ancient Phoenician script are chiseled into the north face of the boulder. Some of the symbols have eroded away due to the effects of weather and water rushing past the boulder which attests to the age of the writing. How it got there is anybody's guess, but it certainly wasn't carried there. Nobody has any idea who inscribed the letters or why it is where it is.

Most scholars agree that Stan Fox, a linguist and Bible expert from England made the most accurate and complete translation of the rock in 1999. According to his interpretation, it is an ancient version of the Ten Commandments and reads:

"I am Jehovah your God who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slaves. There must be no other gods before my face. You must not make any idol. You must not take the name of Jehovah in vain. Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy. Honour your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land that Jehovah your God has given to you. You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not give a false witness against your neighbour. You must not desire the wife of your neighbor nor anything that is his."

Another interesting mystery is that on the south rim of the summit at the highest point of Mystery Mountain is another stone with "YHWH Eloheynu" inscribed on it. More Hebrew script meaning "God our mighty one." And on the eastern rim of the summit are symbols which, according to the positioning of the stars and constellations, have been interpreted to be describing a solar eclipse which occurred in 584 BC. That sure seems to be a bit before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492!

Who were these people and what were they doing in this remote location in what today is New Mexico? Just one more of the world's many mystery's.

Go to the first Route 66 entry here.
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