Keven McQueen - Horror in the Heartland: Strange and Gothic Tales from the Midwest

HORROR
in the
Heartland

HORROR
in the
Heartland

Strange and Gothic Tales from the Midwest

KEVEN MCQUEEN

AN IMPRINT OF

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

BLOOMINGTON AND INDIANAPOLIS

This book is a publication of

Quarry Books an imprint of

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

2017 by Keven McQueen

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McQueen, Keven, author.

Title: Horror in the heartland : strange and Gothic tales from
the Midwest / Keven McQueen.

Description: 1st [edition]. | Bloomington : Indiana University Press,
2017. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017011847 (print) | LCCN 2017024719 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780253029126 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253029041 (pbk. : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9780253028907 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Haunted placesMiddle West. | GhostsMiddle
West. | Curiosities and wondersMiddle West. | Middle West
Miscellanea.

Classification: LCC BF1472.U6 (ebook) | LCC BF1472.U6 M437 2017
(print) | DDC 398.20977dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017011847

1 2 3 4 522 21 20 19 18 17

Dedicated to my great in-laws,
Craig and Debbie Smith.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thrown bouquets to:

Drema Colangelo; Gaile Sheppard Dempsey; Eastern Kentucky University Department of English; Eastern Kentucky University Interlibrary Loan Department (Stefanie Brooks, Heather Frith, Shelby Wills); Amy McQueen and Quentin Hawkins; Darrell and Swecia McQueen; Darren, Alison, and Elizabeth McQueen; Kyle McQueen; Michael, Lori, and Blaine McQueen and Evan Holbrook; Ashley Runyon and everyone at Indiana University Press; Mia Temple. Also: The Ancient of Days.

INTRODUCTION

FAMILIAR IMAGES ENTER THE MIND WHEN ONE CONTEMPLATES the American Midwest: fields of wheat waving in the breeze; cozy small towns with friendly, down-to-earth inhabitants; mighty rivers and verdant farms; terrain as flat as a table.

Certainly those mental pictures depict the Midwestbut they are not the whole story. Where, for example, are the hardworking body snatchers? What about the ghosts? The cemeteries full of wide tombstones with droll inscriptions? The colorful murderers, the practical jokes gone wrong, the rat attacks, the premature burials?

These things are part of the fabric of Americas past as much as Valley Forge or the discovery of the Mississippi. They provide small, if sometimes dark, insights into history and human nature.

I love this unnerving Midwest as much as the idyllic version. It is a region teeming with real-life surrealism and historical horror-comedy. It is a region with a past that abounds with eccentrics, people who sneered at death in its many forms, and many mysteries, including a monster in every forest and a haunted house in every town. Lets explore it!

HORROR
in the
Heartland

EERIE INDIANA

A Booming Underground Industry

IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES, midwestern medical schools were in perpetual need of cadavers for students to dissect. The gallows provided the schools with a steady supply of patients, but there were not enough hanged felons to go around; the result was a thriving trade in grave robbery. A little furtive work with a shovel, a sack, and a lantern, and the intrepid snatcher could make enough money to keep himself comfortably in ale for a while. There are many examples of this lost folk art from Indiana history.

Persons entering a graveyard several miles from Indianapolis on October 20, 1877, spied the bodies of Mrs. R. and her child lying on the ground near their open grave. Why hadnt the body snatchers carried away their prize? The woman died of highly contagious tuberculosis several weeks before; perhaps her excavators were unaware of this fact until they already completed their laborious task, and they left the body out of fear and/or disgust at having done all that hard work for an unusable cadaver.

Sometimes people who objected to the shoplifting of their dearly departed would hire grave watchersoperatives who, exactly as their name implies, were paid to camp out at a gravesite until enough time had passed for the occupant to spoil, thereby becoming of no interest to any medical school. Rising Sun, Indiana, was plagued with body snatchings in early 1877; when a little girl was buried on February 13, her family and friends hired two men to watch the grave. Unbeknownst to them, the mayor hired two others to do the same. When the two sets of grave watchers spotted each other, they came to the natural conclusion and exchanged shots. Henry S., hired by the mayor, received slight wounds, but Joseph J. of the other party sustained a serious load of shot in his side.

Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun: Indiana

Sometimes furtive openers of graves werent in it to steal bodies but rather to swipe valuables, plain and simple. There are cases in which their motives are undiscernible, and that may be for the better.

Ursula T. was buried in a graveyard near Taylorsville after her death on October 26, 1865. In May 1921 her coffin was unearthed and pried open by parties unknownat least eight of them, judging from the footprints in the dirt. The reason was a mystery until one elderly resident remembered an old rumor that dated to the 1840s. Back then, Ursula and her husband, Zachariah, put up $10,000 in gold as bond for a friend who was being tried on a felony charge. The man committed suicide in the courtroom after a guilty verdict was rendered. The religious couple refused to use any of the money after it was returned them; rumor held that Ursula buried the money with Zachariah when he died. So the would-be grave robbers unearthed the wrong casket! Someone must have forgotten to bring a flashlight. There is no record of their taking a second go at it.

Lydia A. died in September 1933 and was buried in Hessville on the sixteenth day of the month. Everyone naively thought she had been laid to rest forever.

In April 1937, George B. and Lynn S., teenage boys respectively from Hammond and Highland, were discovered with Lydias skull in their possession. They confessed to having stolen the body of the young tuberculosis victim from her grave on March 21, 1937, after fortifying themselves with gin. They opened the coffin with a crowbar and stuffed Lydia in their car.

The boys removed Lydias head and tossed the rest of her in a marsh in a field near Warren G. Harding School in Hammond. Georgewho was a whiz at chemistryboiled the head. As he explained to detectives later, If I used acid to clean it, I would have softened it. Then he painted the skull white. Unfortunately for the youthful ghouls, they accidentally left a leather glove and a pen with the monogram G behind in the cemetery, clues that led authorities right to them.