[xvi] THE DOLLOP HOMESTEAD (Revenant, 1947) – The third son of a pig farming family, Jodi Dollop was unnaturally large and is believed to have had mild intellectual disabilities. At a young age he became fascinated with entomology, though it was later discovered he merely enjoyed sticking insects with pins. This behavior progressed to small wild animals and pigs, until one day the Dollops returned from a trip to town to find Jodi's two older brothers impaled on the metal poles Mrs. Dollop used to hang her laundry line. The Dollops did their best to keep the murders secret, but when a traveling vacuum salesman visited the farm while Mrs. Dollop was alone with her son, Jodi murdered her and impaled the salesman with his own merchandise. Since Jodi's death, insects, wild animals and lost pets have been found spiked and pinned to the walls of the Dollop Homestead.
[xvii] EMMA LOU AMESBURY (Trickster, 1934) – aka Sister Serpent, Emma Amesbury was a nun believed by her convent to have been possessed by Satan. After seducing the priest and found to be carousing with other nuns, she was excommunicated and committed to Bright Falls Sanitarium. While under its care, Dr. Hammersmith allowed her to wear a nun's habit, using role-playing to treat her delusions. She began seducing several members of the male staff—the last of whom she unmanned with her teeth. After her death of tuberculosis, staff claimed to have seen her ghost roaming the halls nude except for her habit. Only one thing seemed to deter her restless ghost: a Christmas snow globe belonging to her former psychiatrist.
[xviii] DR. HAMMERSMITH (Possessor, 1950) – aka Dr. Death (see: Bright Falls Sanitarium). Hammersmith was put to death for his crimes. His ghost haunts the halls of Bright Falls, particularly the Operating Theater, where he committed the worst of his crimes.
[xix] POLLYANNA (Poltergeist) – The Pollyanna doll was an innocent china doll until it was given a new home at the Happy Home for Girls, a Pennsylvania orphanage, in the mid-1920s. There, with the addition of a small child's tricycle, many children claimed to hear "Pollyanna" talking to them, giggling and rolling up and down the halls late at night. Staff claimed the children made up the stories, blaming the doll for their own bad behavior. According to legend, when the strict headmistress was found dead from a third-floor drop, police discovered Pollyanna on her trike in the broken window.
[xx] CAR 438 (Apparitions. 1976) – The Chambers Street crashon the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line was the worst accident since the 1928 Times Square derailment. In total 141 passengers were injured and six deaths, with the majority of those killed in the third car, Car 438, when it struck a wall. A heavily-graffitied Brightliner car, it was decommissioned after the accident and sat in the Concourse Yard for decades. It was said to rock from side to side on the yard tracks and emit a phantom stench of human excrement and body odor, though no evidence of human activity could be found. Rex Garrote's estate spared it from being used as a part of the artificial Redbird Reef off the coast of Slaughter Beach, Delaware among hundreds of other MTA subway cars.
[xxi] SEA DREAM (Apparitions, 1987) – New York Stock Exchange broker Buddy Aimes and his mistress, Svetlana Mikhailov, took a cruise on the Sea Dream just one day after the Black Monday market crash. Aimes was notorious for selling junk bonds, and lost a fortune. With a poisoned bottle of champagne they toasted his "success." It is unknown whether or not Svetlana was aware of his plan, though Aimes's widow claimed he left her and their two children to be with his mistress. "Good riddance to both of them," she was quoted as saying. The Sea Dream coasted for days until it washed up in Bar Harbor, ME, where Aimes had once promised his widow they would buy a summer home once he hit the big time.
[xxii] STUNTMAN LYLE (Apparition, 1980) – From Rex Garrote's narration: "Lyle Dabner was one of the most sought-after and death-defying stuntmen in Hollywood during the American New Wave era. He worked with the big names: Scorcese, de Palma, Friedkin, Cassavetes. After a heated argument with a first-time director over the logistics of a crash, Dabner decided to perform the stunt anyway, driving over the side of the dam while the cameras rolled. The seatbelt rig failed, and Lyle was decapitated on impact. I call this high-octane exhibit, Stunt Driver Loses Head, Job."
[xxiii] FONTAINE COUNTY CORRECTIONAL (Various) – Some of the most violent psychopaths in America were imprisoned here at one point or another, from ruthless gangsters to serial killers, rapists and white-collar criminals. The mettle of many hardened criminals was tested in C Block, where prisoners were pitted against each other with whatever weapon they could find, while guards in the "Coliseum's" tower placed bets on the outcome. Fontaine was thought to be a "dumping ground for bad guards." After a riot in 1994 causing the deaths of several inmates and staff, officials decided to act on longstanding advice and close the prison for good. It is considered to be the most haunted place in America, housing the restless spirits of countless men put to death by the state. (Visitors are able to participate in an authentic prison riot experience on the hour.)
[xxiv] MR. LIM (Revenant, 1878) – Jianguo Lim (Lin) immigrated from China to the Sierra Nevada as a gold prospector in the early 1850s. He formed the largest group of Chinese gold miners in the area, protecting them from attacks from European miners. After years on the panhandle, he lost what little gold he had in a holdup at the Great Western Holdings in Lonesome Plains, Nevada. He worked for several years on the railroads to get back on his feet before purchasing a plot of land in Oregon, where he began his paper mill. By 1878, when he was pushed in front of a train by an unknown assailant, he was one ot the wealthiest Chinese landowners in Oregon.
[xxv] STEAMROLLER (Apparition, 1995) – A star defensive tackle for the Knee High, Nebraska Bighorns football team, Billy "Steamroller" Becker had a big future ahead of him in the game. While on the road to a championship game against the Huskers he stuck his head out of the bus window. The bus driver had veered too close to the ditch and his head struck a road sign, causing his immediate decapitation.
[xxvi] GARROTE HOUSE (Various) – Built by shipping magnate Oliver Hedgewood, Garrote House (formerly the Hedgewood Estate) is not only haunted by the spirits of many former residents, but is believed by some to be plagued by an entity many paranormal investigators and spiritual mediums have called "demonic," or "cursed." While the ghosts you will encounter inside are real, there is no concrete evidence that any such malignant supernatural force exists within its walls. Several deaths occurred during construction of the house, though it was not uncommon at the time due to poor labor conditions. The house was passed down through the generations of Hedgewoods, from Oliver to his widow Charlemagne, to their eldest son Horace, to his eldest Ernest. Upon Ernest's death, the house lay abandoned for several decades, believed by locals to be cursed. Garrote House has a long history of suicide. Teenagers and indigents fell victim to its allure, and paid the price with their lives. In the late-'70s it was owned by world-renowned sculptor Clayton Odell, who brutally murdered his entire family before killing himself. Finally, it was purchased by Rex Garrote in 1981. The last surviving Hedgewood, an orphan, sold it for far less than its value. Garrote wrote his most successful books there, and it was suggested he was merely a vessel translating the true horrors of the house onto the blank page. Garrote committed suicide there in 1999, the house abandoned yet again… but never alone.
[xxvii] THE BEHEMOTH – Clayton Odell became a darling of the 1970s art scene with his found-object sculptures, fusing human likenesses with mechanical and structural parts. His work was displayed in prominent galleries all over the world, from the MOMA in New York to Kunstmuseum Basel in Switzerland. It wasn't long after purchasing the Hedgewood Estate (Garrote House) that his behavior began seeming "off." Critics and colleagues suspected fame had gone to his head. With less than six months spent in the new house, Clayton sleepwalked to his studio to retrieve some tools, whereupon he killed first his sleeping wife and then his two newborn children. He cut apart their bodies and fused them into a monstrous sculpture made of flesh, which he wore before killing himself. The tragedy made world headlines. However, Odell's
art fell into disfavor, sold off to private collectors with a taste for the macabre.
[xxviii] OLIVER HEDGEWOOD – A shipping magnate by trade, after Hedgewood built his enormous estate he began to diversify his investments into acquiring curiosities and objets d'art of both a macabre and sexual nature from around the globe. His most prized possession was a bronze fist and phallus amulet from Rome, 150- 200 A.D. He was alleged to rub this furiously to achieve arousal. Hedgewood's corpse was discovered in the kitchen by his wife, upon returning from an extended vacation in the Geneva. He had apparently shot himself in the head with a shotgun. He was survived by three children.
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