Stall - Suburban legends: true tales of murder, mayhem, and minivans

Copyright 2006, 2013 by Sam Stall

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2006922745

eISBN: 978-1-59474-653-6

Designed by Andie Reid
Production management by John J. McGurk

Quirk Books
215 Church Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
quirkbooks.com

v3.1

INTRODUCTION:

The hair-raising introduction, in which the author ruminates about the strangeness rampant in Americas fringe cities and bedroom communities.

Somethings not quite right about the suburbs.

Even if youve never set foot in the land of culs-de-sac, soccer moms, and neighborhood mixers, youve probably suspected as much. But if you live there or grew up there, you know its not all pool parties and pot roast dinners. Even on the sunniest days, when the kids play in the lightly traveled streets, dads attend to their immaculately kept lawns, and moms plan their book club meetings, something still feels just a little off. Things are a bit too perfect. Its as if this great show of normalcy underscores the rampant abnormality festering just below the surface.

If you feel this way about the suburbs, congratulate yourself. Because your unease is right on the money.

The problem with these redoubts of middle-class comfort is that the thinking behind them is fundamentally flawed. Ever since the first cornfield was platted into half-acre (.2 hectare) lots, people have flocked to such places to escape the crime, vice, and general depravity of the city. But it didnt work. Because the sources of crime, vice, and depravity dont live in the city. They dwell in the human soul.

And no matter where we go, there they are.

When it comes to manifestations of bizarre behavior, the suburbs arent any worse than other places. It just seems like a bigger deal when something weird or horrible happens in a place specifically designed to keep the weird and horrible at bay. It violates the unwritten covenant of suburban living. In exchange for residing in a house only slightly more distinctive and personalized than the little red plastic ones included in Monopoly games, one is supposed to enjoy a certain insulation from lifes coarser side.

Thats why when someone finds, say, a headless corpse down by the docks, its no big deal. Thats where its supposed to be. But when a headless body turns up on the front lawn of a fourteen-room McMansion in a place called Deer Run Vistas or Fishermans Cove or Mountain Valley Estates, thats a story.

Suburban Legends gathers together a nasty little sampler of such incidents. This Welcome Wagon basket full of goodies includes a look at everything from homicidal housewives (always a favorite) to mysterious disappearances to ghosts and ghouls. Think of it as The Twilight Zone meets The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Only with a much higher body count.

Youll never look at planned communities the same way again.

Most ghosts are famously camera shy. But one specter nicknamed Popper seemed to love showing off for the media.

Back in the 1950s, the Long Island suburb of Seaford, New York, looked like something straight out of Leave It to Beaver. The tree-shaded streets were lined with newly built middle-class housing, and the yards were packed with hordes of grade-school-age baby boomers. That was certainly the situation at the James Hermann residencea green and white, ranch-style home where James, his wife, Lucille, and their two children, also named James and Lucille, resided.

But all that normalcy went out the window on February 3, 1958.

It happened in the afternoon, shortly after Lucille, thirteen, and James, twelve, came home from school. Mom, in perfect keeping with the era, was there to meet them. This scene of suburban bliss was quickly blown away when, suddenly, several bottles in separate locations around the house popped their caps and spewed liquid all over the place. Everything from a jug of bleach in the basement to a container of holy water in the master bedroom emptied out in rapid succession.

Lucille Hermann battled a poltergeist that had a bottle fetish.

Needless to say, Lucille, James, and their mother were nowhere near the containers when this happened. By the time Dad got home by train that evening, however, theyd managed to put the incident behind them. Everyone seemed ready to chalk it up as just one of those things.

But that plan was shot out of the water two days later when, at about the same time in the afternoon as the first incident, another messy round of bottle blasts took place. On this occasion the lineup included a container of nail polish, a jug of starch, and yet more holy water. Then on Friday, the same thing happened again.

James Sr., who watched the proceedings carefully, soon developed a theory. His son was something of a science wiz. It occurred to him that the boy might be rigging the containers, perhaps with a CO2 charge, so that they popped more or less simultaneously. But his idea lost its fizz when he confronted his son, who at the time was brushing his teeth in the bathroom, about his suspicions. In the midst of their argument, a bottle of shampoo slid across the sink under its own power and flopped to the floor.

That was enough for the old man. He called the cops, whoafter grilling him for a couple of minutes to make sure he wasnt a cranksent out a patrol officer to look things over. The cop, James Hughes, found the whole thing fairly amusing, until he watched several bottles in the bathroom pop their lids and spray their contents in his direction. This got the case bumped up the chain of command to detective Joseph Tozzi, who started prowling the Hermann residence on February 11. He learned that whatever was messing with the bottles seemed to have a particular problem with the container of holy water in the bedroom, which was opened and emptied several times. On one occasion when James Sr. himself heard the cap pop, he rushed into the room and found the container on the floor. When he picked it up, it seemed unnaturally warm.

On February 15, things escalated. The kids were watching TV with a cousin when a porcelain statue rose off a coffee table and then fell to the floor. The family decided they needed help from a more powerful force than the local constabulary, so they called in a Catholic priest to bless the house. Unfortunately that didnt stop the entitynow, for obvious reasons, nicknamed Popperfrom continuing its antics.