Unsolved Mysteries: Ghosts, Disk 1

“There is no question that people experience ghosts” the program says. The question is what are they? They could be spirits of the dead; they could be entities from another dimension; they could be “an artifact of human psyche.”

This particular story is about South Carolina and a ghost called “The Grey Man.” The ghost has been seen for 170 years every time a major hurricane is about to hit, and the people who have seen it have been spared from harm.

The legend began in the late summer of 1822. A wealthy young planter is riding with his manservant on Paulee's Island. The guy was in a hurry to see his fiancee who he was going to marry in a few days. He fell off his horse into a marsh and died.

Legend says the fiancee took to wandering the beach, walking alone. One afternoon she thought she saw the guy but he disappeared before she could reach him. That night she heard the guy whisper to her to leave the island, that “the wind” was coming. She and her parents left the island the next day, and soon after a hurricane hit.

The next time the ghost was seen was at the turn of the century, October of 1893. The guy talks to the ghost but it doesn't respond (he thinks it's a real man); the hurricane soon hits but the guy's house is undamaged.

Something similar happened in 1954. Although the hurricane did a lot of damage, the home of the guy who say the ghost was not damaged at all.

The next hurricane is in 1989. A couple sees the gray man; two days later a hurricane hits and causes vast destruction, but their home is almost untouched.

Trying to track down information on these episodes is much easier than with One Step Beyond since specific places and/or dates are being given. I managed to find one reference to The Grey Man from the Oakland Tribune, April 11, 1971. The ghost was mentioned in a much longer article.

This is one of the “hitchhiking ghosts” type of stories. I know that skeptics love to say that absolutely none of these are real which is why I've included two articles (out of many that I found) that refer to actual sightings in addition to this segment of the show.

This takes place near Resurrection Cemetery near Chicago. It starts with a 1979 sighting.

A cab driver sees a strange girl dressed in white by the side of the road late at night. The cabbie is lost and asks the girl for directions. He'll give her a ride if she helps him and she gets into the cab. She tells him to stop as he's passing the cemetery. He stops and turns around to ask her why they are stopping there and she's no longer in the cab.

(This is an unusual sighting in a variety of ways. For one thing, the ghost seems able to actually touch and interact with physical objects as she opens the cab door to get in. Secondly, she is able to speak clearly to the cabbie. She also appears to be an actual physical person rather than some nebulous light. She is in the range of interactive ghosts rather than the repeating-something-over-and-over type of ghost.)

A local historian notes that there is a lot of documentation relating to the ghost called Resurrection Mary. He notes the people seeing her are all average people without any forms of psychic abilities.

The first known sighting of Resurrection Mary in 1939 at a dance. (The man who had the sighting is shown actually being interviewed although he died later.) The guy danced with her (again showing her ability to interact with physical matter and have a solid physical presence herself.)

He offers to give her a ride home but she tells him to driver on a particular rode, then has him stop when he gets opposite Resurrection Cemetery. She then gets out of the car. She walked away and vanished as he was watching her.

The next day he does his own research, finding the house he believes she said she lived in. The woman that is there tells him that Mary is her daughter but has been dead for five years.

The name of the girl is given and an article is shown saying she had been killed in a traffic accident.

There have been numerous sightings of her in different places.

The segment talks with another eyewitness who was originally skeptical of ghosts. She was in a car being driven by her husband and with two other friends. They talk to another witness who was driving a car and with a friend inside. They were passing the cemetery when a woman in white ran out in front of her car yet there was no impact and the woman vanished.

I've included two articles on Resurrection Mary out of a whole bunch of articles I found. The first is from the Daily Herald in Chicago, Dec. 19, 1977, and the second is from the Oct. 31, 1994 issue of the same newspaper.

The Delta Queen, a riverboat. It opens with the ship in New Orleans awaiting some repairs. There's only one person on board, someone named Mike Williams. (I found some articles on him but they didn't mention anything about a ghost.) He recounts what happened in relation to cabin 109.

A woman named Mary Green who piloted the Delta Queen. When she died it was in cabin 109.

The next event they talk about is in 1985. A female worker gets a call from a woman in a cabin complaining about being cold. The complaint had been from cabin 109. The worker called the mate, who was Mike Williams, and he went to the cabin to handle the complaint. There was no one using that room, though.

The worker saw a face through the window, then the person disappears. She's upset and has the mate walk her to her cabin but sees a painting of the woman she saw through the window. It's Mary Green. It turns out that Mike and Myra, the worker, ended up falling in love and getting married.

This was one story that I couldn't find any references to.

They talk to various witnesses who recount various sightings. The second person they talk to says she was a skeptic.

The episode goes into the history of the Queen Mary and how it was used as a troop ship in World War II. There were a total of 49 deaths during the years the ship was used for one purpose or another.

Other sightings are discussed, including one by a person who stated he did not believe in supernatural things. His experience was an auditory sound which he found out later could have been something from thirty years earlier when the ship collided with another one.

In one case two people are near the ship's pool and hear a young girl giggling. They see splashing in the water and watch as wet footsteps appear.

The show brought some experts with recording equipment in to see what they could pick up, if anything.

A group of six psychics is brought aboard to see what they can pick up. They work alone (which is good since it helps prevent collaboration among them). This is all in addition to the setting up of some recording equipment. They went to different areas. Some reported various things, others didn't detect anything (which is reasonable seeing that they were in different places.)

One researcher picked up sounds on a tape recorder.

This is one of two episodes on this DVD that have a commentary version. One of the guys is the executive producer of the series. The other was the director of the show during the season this episode was on.

One thing they note is that it was hard to get people to come on the show and admit to hearing and/or seeing things. The episode was a Halloween special and dealt only with ghosts. They talk about working on the episode, the people they talked to and their own beliefs. They also point out that the people on this episode did not do it to gain fame since Unsolved Mysteries at that time was quite new and not famous at all.

An article relating to the topic from The Frederick Post (Maryland) of May 22, 2000.

1988, with employees of Big Moose Lake approaching the staff lodge.

The woman who first entered the lodge had a feeling that someone was there.

While she was feeling a presence, her other three friends outside were actually seeing one.

Grace Brown, who was murdered there in 1906.

The event became a movie, A Place in the Sun. Shelly Winters, Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor were all in the movie of a girl who is seduced by a faithless lover. The movie's portrayal of Grace was fairly inaccurate, however, her personality being much better than that given to her in the movie.

Chester Gillette was the factory owner's nephew and the one who ended up killing her.

They go into the background of how the two got along. However, he kept the affair a secret, never taking her out in public or telling anyone about their relationship. He was also playing around with other, wealthy, women. She ended up getting pregnant.

In 1906 he took her to a lake and rented a boat. She had wanted him to marry her (to avoid scandal) and she thought this was a trip during which he would propose. A search team found her body near the overturned boat. Gillette turned up two days later in a hotel. He denied knowing her, then claimed she drowned herself.

His story, needless to say, didn't stand up to scrutiny. He was convicted of first degree murder and was given the death penalty.

Another time two women saw a mist on the lake and watched as the mist coalesced into the ghost.

Something to keep in mind here is that both these particular sightings involved multiple people; two in one case, three in the other, all the people seeing the same thing. The program also talks about a book made, An American Tragedy, and says that both the book and the movie were too sympathetic to the Gillette character and misrepresented Grace's character.

The first article, dealing with the facts of the murder, is from the Ans Messenger from Athens, Ohio, July 7, 1966. The second article, which deals with the ghost, is from the Syracuse Herald Journal, Oct. 29, 1995.

Feb. 21, 1977, Chicago firefighters respond to a fire report. The fire is in an upstairs living room. They find the body of a woman underneath the mattress. She had murdered.

The investigation, according to the narrator, quickly reached a dead end.

5 ½ months after the crime the main detective gets a call from a doctor and his wife.

The man and his wife tell the detective they have some information about Teresita. The wife worked with Teresita at the hospital.

One night at work the wife was resting for a moment during a long shift and suddenly Teresita's image appeared to her.

Two weeks later, at their home, the wife complained of extreme fatigue and laid down. Her husband checked on her and she began to speak as if she were Teresita. (The husband didn't know Teresita). The voice tells him the name of the killer.

There was another session of possession at the home. The voice asked why the husband hadn't gone to the police. He replied that there was still no actual evidence, and the voice told him about some evidence that could be found.

The detective is told about what happened and starts doing a background check on the killer who also worked at the hospital. They bring the guy in but he claims innocence. The voice had said that the guy took Teresita's jewelry and gave it to his girlfriend, so the girlfriend was contacted and said she had been given jewelry.

The girlfriend brings the jewelry in and Teresita's family members are able to identify some of the pieces as hers. When the named killer was told about the jewelry he confessed to the murder. He got 14 years in prison.

The article I found on this story is from the Chronicle Telegram, Elyria, Ohio, March 6, 1978.

Lowe's Cottage, a 250-year old structure in England.

One of the owners talks about seeing ghosts and seeing articles thrown about. The owners sue the former owners, saying they were not told about the ghosts while the former owners are counter-suicing, saying the new owners are just trying to get out of paying for the place.

Around six weeks after moving in the new owners detect a cold spot and haze in one of the rooms.

One of the former owners says they never saw anything unusual in the cottage.

The new owners talk about other things that happened including an attempt to strangle one of them.

The wife also saw an apparation.

The local church was contacted to do an bless the house. The effect is only temporary, however.

Local residents claim to know stories about the cottage. It's a tale from the 1860's about a milkmaid who lived in the cottage with her lover. The woman was killed by her employer and the young man hung himself when he found out she died.

The owners hired two paranormal investigators to take their house using night vision. Their film picked up some things moving without being touched.

The story just ends there. I have no idea how it turned out. The episode doesn't offer any additional information which is the wrong thing to do. If they weren't ready to say who won in court then they shouldn't have aired the episode in the first place. A Google search under “Loew's cottage” turned up nothing.

Fortunately, this was one of two episodes that had commentaries. The show was done in either season 8 or 9. Unfortunately, it doesn't add any information as to who won the suit.

June of 1995, three business partners take over a ranch. They settled into a house and the first night heard footsteps. Effects differed from night to night. Sounds only, no apparition.

Noises were heard sometimes by all three guys, sometimes by only one.

Two sisters of one of the guys visited and stayed overnight and they also heard the noises.

The show brought in a parapsychologist and his assistant to try and determine what was going on. He thinks it's underground water that makes the noises and sets up electromagnetic fields that affect people's brains.

The episode ends here. I couldn't find any specific references to the event.

The mother responds to a cry from her son in their home in Connecticut. The kid saw a man in his room. The man then disappeared.

The boy is able to identify the ghost in a photo. The boy claimed there were also evil spirits in the house that were after him (he had been told this by the ghost, who was the boy's grandfather.)

A paranormal investigator was brought in.

To eliminate a medical explanation the boy was put through physical and psychological tests. Nothing unusual was found in either case.

They moved to a different house but the effects followed them.

The boy was given an exorcism. The family moved a total of eight times and he had a total of four exorcisms as of the show and he was still undergoing these kinds of paranormal attacks.


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