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The Kratzville Phantom · River City Mystery - Investigating mysteries in southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and western Kentucky

• 0:13
  Speaker: Imagine standing in the pitch
• 0:14
  Speaker: black of Elmendorf's Woods in
• 0:16
  Speaker: the small community of
• 0:17
  Speaker: Kratzville six miles outside
• 0:19
  Speaker: Evansville, Indiana.
• 0:21
  Speaker: It's Saturday night, January 8th, 1916.
• 0:25
  Speaker: The ground is frozen solid, the
• 0:27
  Speaker: air is bitter cold, and you're
• 0:30
  Speaker: standing shoulder to shoulder
• 0:31
  Speaker: with twenty four other men and
• 0:33
  Speaker: boys.
• 0:34
  Speaker: You've brought hunting dogs, and every single one of you is armed
• 0:37
  Speaker: with rifles, clubs and pistols.
• 0:40
  Speaker: For over a week, terror has
• 0:42
  Speaker: gripped the farming community of
• 0:43
  Speaker: Kratzville Women and children
• 0:46
  Speaker: refused to go outside after
• 0:47
  Speaker: dark.
• 0:48
  Speaker: Even many of the men are terrified because something is
• 0:52
  Speaker: lurking out in these woods.
• 0:54
  Speaker: At 8:30 PM, the hunting dogs go wild.
• 0:58
  Speaker: You lock your grip on your rifle.
• 1:00
  Speaker: Your heart is pounding against your ribs.
• 1:03
  Speaker: You scan the thickets expecting
• 1:05
  Speaker: a bobcat, a stray dog, maybe a
• 1:07
  Speaker: trespasser.
• 1:08
  Speaker: And then out of nowhere, out of thin, empty air, a ball of fire
• 1:13
  Speaker: drops from the sky.
• 1:16
  Speaker: It doesn't crash.
• 1:17
  Speaker: It doesn't ignite the brush.
• 1:18
  Speaker: It just hovers gently, floating among the bare tree trunks,
• 1:22
  Speaker: glowing with a soft light about three blocks away.
• 1:26
  Speaker: For a few seconds, nobody moves.
• 1:29
  Speaker: Nobody breathes.
• 1:31
  Speaker: Then somebody yells.
• 1:32
  Speaker: And all twenty five men charge
• 1:33
  Speaker: into the brush, guns raised,
• 1:35
  Speaker: boots crashing through the
• 1:36
  Speaker: undergrowth.
• 1:38
  Speaker: They run as hard as they can,
• 1:40
  Speaker: but no matter how fast they
• 1:41
  Speaker: sprint, that ball of fire glides
• 1:43
  Speaker: through the trees, staying
• 1:45
  Speaker: exactly three blocks ahead of
• 1:47
  Speaker: them until it vanishes into the
• 1:48
  Speaker: night.
• 1:50
  Speaker: Grab your lantern, because tonight we're heading into the
• 1:55
  Speaker: dark of Elmendorf's Woods to hunt the Kratzville Phantom.
• 2:01
  Speaker: I see two horribly hideous looking little dog like
• 2:05
  Speaker: creatures in this house.
• 2:07
  Speaker: It was a disembodied voice.
• 2:09
  Speaker: It was like a little child trying to scare us.
• 2:11
  Speaker: I don't know what this was.
• 2:14
  Speaker: I I've I've heard everything you can think of.
• 2:18
  Speaker: This was nothing I'm ever accustomed to.
• 2:20
  Speaker: Ever.
• 2:21
  Speaker: It was terrifying because it was like our.
• 2:24
  Speaker: There were so many people to.
• 2:25
  Speaker: Where it was like, are we all seeing this?
• 2:28
  Speaker: So everybody is scared.
• 2:29
  Speaker: The kids are crying.
• 2:31
  Speaker: The women don't.
• 2:32
  Speaker: You know June's about to lose it.
• 2:34
  Speaker: And what are they to do?
• 2:36
  Speaker: These things will not die.
• 2:42
  Speaker: Welcome back to River City
• 2:44
  Speaker: Mystery, where we talk about the
• 2:45
  Speaker: mysteries of southern Indiana,
• 2:47
  Speaker: southern Illinois, and Western
• 2:48
  Speaker: Kentucky.
• 2:49
  Speaker: I'm your host, Matt Deig.
• 2:52
  Speaker: To make sense of what happened
• 2:53
  Speaker: in Elmendorf Woods that night,
• 2:55
  Speaker: we have to rewind and go back to
• 2:56
  Speaker: the very beginning of January
• 2:57
  Speaker: 1916.
• 3:00
  Speaker: You see, Kratzville was a very small, tight knit rural
• 3:02
  Speaker: community nestled along Kratzville Road around six miles
• 3:06
  Speaker: west of downtown Evansville.
• 3:08
  Speaker: Things were not normally very exciting.
• 3:10
  Speaker: It was a farming community, so not a lot going on.
• 3:13
  Speaker: However.
• 3:14
  Speaker: Around New Years, things were
• 3:16
  Speaker: getting really weird in this
• 3:17
  Speaker: area.
• 3:19
  Speaker: It all started on the farm of Earl Goldsmith, who lived right
• 3:22
  Speaker: along Kratzville Road.
• 3:24
  Speaker: One night, Goldsmith stepped
• 3:27
  Speaker: outside his farmhouse and froze,
• 3:28
  Speaker: still floating right up through
• 3:31
  Speaker: his barn.
• 3:32
  Speaker: Lot was what he described as a "lambent flame", a soft, glowing
• 3:36
  Speaker: flicker of light.
• 3:39
  Speaker: It drifted silently across the ground, floated right up to the
• 3:42
  Speaker: door of his barn, and paused.
• 3:46
  Speaker: The second Goldsmith walked
• 3:47
  Speaker: toward it to see what was going
• 3:48
  Speaker: on.
• 3:49
  Speaker: The light vanished into thin air.
• 3:52
  Speaker: So Goldsmith talked to his neighbors, and it turned out he
• 3:55
  Speaker: wasn't seeing things.
• 3:57
  Speaker: Theodore Miller, who lived about a mile and a half down
• 4:00
  Speaker: Kratzville Road from the city limits, reported seeing a light
• 4:02
  Speaker: in the woods down at Fred Klenck's grocery store and
• 4:06
  Speaker: saloon, which was like basically the town hall for Kratzville.
• 4:10
  Speaker: Several people said they had
• 4:11
  Speaker: seen strange figures floating
• 4:12
  Speaker: around the surface of a pond in
• 4:14
  Speaker: Elmendorf's Woods.
• 4:16
  Speaker: Within a few days, there were all kinds of rumors about what
• 4:19
  Speaker: was going on.
• 4:21
  Speaker: Women and children refused to go outside at night, and as the
• 4:24
  Speaker: Evansville Press put it, quote, even some men were "skeered".
• 4:28
  Speaker: Unquote.
• 4:30
  Speaker: By Sunday night, January 2, the
• 4:32
  Speaker: men of Kratzville decided they'd
• 4:34
  Speaker: had enough.
• 4:35
  Speaker: They weren't going to hide in their homes while some phantom
• 4:37
  Speaker: haunted their neighborhood.
• 4:39
  Speaker: So local saloon owner Fred Klenck rallied a crew.
• 4:43
  Speaker: He got together James Duggan,
• 4:45
  Speaker: Theodore Miller, Carl Miller,
• 4:47
  Speaker: Charles Kirkpatrick and Claude
• 4:49
  Speaker: Franks.
• 4:51
  Speaker: Their plan was simple find the Phantom.
• 4:55
  Speaker: They drove out to the edge of
• 4:56
  Speaker: Elmendorf's Woods along the road
• 4:57
  Speaker: loop, and used their vehicle
• 4:59
  Speaker: headlights to flood the tree
• 5:00
  Speaker: line.
• 5:01
  Speaker: And sure enough, in the glare of
• 5:03
  Speaker: those auto lights, they saw
• 5:05
  Speaker: flickering beams moving between
• 5:06
  Speaker: the trees.
• 5:08
  Speaker: The men closed in, ready for a confrontation.
• 5:13
  Speaker: They found that the lights were the flash lamps of hunters
• 5:16
  Speaker: attempting to hunt possums.
• 5:19
  Speaker: The next morning, the local newspapers had a field day.
• 5:22
  Speaker: The Evansville Press ran the
• 5:23
  Speaker: headline ghosts were only possum
• 5:25
  Speaker: hunters.
• 5:27
  Speaker: A wave of relief washed over Kratzville.
• 5:30
  Speaker: The mystery seemed solved.
• 5:32
  Speaker: Case closed.
• 5:34
  Speaker: Well, not so fast.
• 5:37
  Speaker: Around Friday, January 7, Earl
• 5:39
  Speaker: Goldsmith announced that he and
• 5:40
  Speaker: two friends were the ones who
• 5:42
  Speaker: discovered the source of some of
• 5:43
  Speaker: the lights while searching the
• 5:44
  Speaker: woods.
• 5:45
  Speaker: They had found two men and a boy
• 5:47
  Speaker: from Avondale with an ordinary
• 5:48
  Speaker: lantern.
• 5:50
  Speaker: The boy and the men and the boy
• 5:52
  Speaker: said they were looking for coons
• 5:53
  Speaker: and possums.
• 5:55
  Speaker: That's what made the paper.
• 5:56
  Speaker: Goldsmith publicly doubted.
• 5:58
  Speaker: Their excuse, he said the
• 5:59
  Speaker: existence of such animals in the
• 6:01
  Speaker: forest was extremely unlikely at
• 6:02
  Speaker: that time.
• 6:04
  Speaker: The men admitted.
• 6:05
  Speaker: He reported that they made a number of trips to the woods and
• 6:07
  Speaker: flashed the light around And sure enough, over the next few
• 6:11
  Speaker: days, the lights came back.
• 6:13
  Speaker: Lights kept appearing in Elmendorf's Woods.
• 6:17
  Speaker: By Friday, January 7, the
• 6:19
  Speaker: community decided that half
• 6:20
  Speaker: measures were not going to cut
• 6:22
  Speaker: it.
• 6:23
  Speaker: They weren't just going to shine headlights from the road.
• 6:25
  Speaker: They were going to flush out the entire forest.
• 6:29
  Speaker: So formal invitations were
• 6:31
  Speaker: published in the papers for a
• 6:32
  Speaker: quote unquote great spook drive
• 6:35
  Speaker: scheduled for Saturday night,
• 6:37
  Speaker: January 8.
• 6:39
  Speaker: The instructions were clear.
• 6:41
  Speaker: Every able bodied man who wanted
• 6:43
  Speaker: to take a crack at an "all-wool spook"
• 6:45
  Speaker: was to meet at Fred Klenck's
• 6:47
  Speaker: Saloon at eight o'clock sharp.
• 6:50
  Speaker: They
• 6:50
  Speaker: would march into Elmendorf's
• 6:51
  Speaker: Woods with guns, clubs
• 6:53
  Speaker: and dogs, and comb the woods
• 6:55
  Speaker: until midnight on Saturday night,
• 6:59
  Speaker: January 8. A crowd of twenty
• 7:01
  Speaker: five men and boys gathered
• 7:02
  Speaker: outside Klenck's Saloon.
• 7:04
  Speaker: They
• 7:04
  Speaker: brought shotguns, rifles, handguns and clubs. James
• 7:08
  Speaker: Duggan, a local telephone lineman,
• 7:10
  Speaker: was among those involved.
• 7:13
  Speaker: They
• 7:13
  Speaker: also brought a pack of experienced hunting dogs or quote
• 7:16
  Speaker: unquote spook hounds, as the papers put it. At
• 7:20
  Speaker: eight p m, the posse marched towards
• 7:22
  Speaker: the darkness of Elmendorf's
• 7:24
  Speaker: Woods. For
• 7:25
  Speaker: thirty minutes they beat new paths into the forest. Then,
• 7:30
  Speaker: at exactly 8:30 PM, the dogs began to bark wildly. The
• 7:35
  Speaker: search party stopped, and right
• 7:37
  Speaker: in front of them a little ball
• 7:39
  Speaker: of fire appeared among the trees.
• 7:42
  Speaker: It
• 7:42
  Speaker: floated gently among the gnarled
• 7:44
  Speaker: branches, about three blocks
• 7:46
  Speaker: away. The
• 7:48
  Speaker: men stood still for a few seconds. Then
• 7:52
  Speaker: the entire posse marched. The
• 7:55
  Speaker: twenty five men crashed through the underbrush, shouting and
• 7:58
  Speaker: trying to close the gap. But
• 8:00
  Speaker: the fireball refused to let them near. It
• 8:02
  Speaker: glided through the dark trunks, keeping the three block distance
• 8:05
  Speaker: the entire time uncatchable, before finally fading
• 8:09
  Speaker: into the night, exhausted and thoroughly mystified, the search
• 8:13
  Speaker: party gave up. They
• 8:15
  Speaker: headed back to Klenck's Saloon, unable to explain what they
• 8:19
  Speaker: had just witnessed. So
• 8:23
  Speaker: what was floating in Elmendorf's
• 8:25
  Speaker: Woods in January of 1916?
• 8:28
  Speaker: In
• 8:29
  Speaker: the days that followed, theories
• 8:30
  Speaker: flew back and forth across
• 8:31
  Speaker: Evansville. Skeptics
• 8:34
  Speaker: pointed to Ignis fatuus,
• 8:36
  Speaker: which is Latin for "foolish fire",
• 8:38
  Speaker: better known as swamp gas,
• 8:40
  Speaker: or as it was more commonly known
• 8:41
  Speaker: at the time, quote unquote,
• 8:43
  Speaker: jack o lanterns, a natural
• 8:45
  Speaker: chemical reaction where decaying.
• 8:47
  Speaker: Organic matter
• 8:48
  Speaker: and wet soil produces faint floating flames. But James
• 8:53
  Speaker: Duggan shot down that theory pretty quickly. He pointed
• 8:56
  Speaker: out that Elmendorf's Woods wasn't swampy at all, other than
• 8:59
  Speaker: just normal dampness from winter rains. If it
• 9:03
  Speaker: wasn't swamp gas and it wasn't hunters with lanterns, locals turned
• 9:07
  Speaker: to another theory. Older residents
• 9:10
  Speaker: around Kratzville recalled a legend from years
• 9:12
  Speaker: before. According to
• 9:13
  Speaker: local lore, an old miser had
• 9:15
  Speaker: buried bags of gold in Elmendorf's Woods.
• 9:18
  Speaker: To the
• 9:19
  Speaker: more superstitious folks in Vanderburgh County, the answer was
• 9:22
  Speaker: obvious. The ball
• 9:23
  Speaker: of fire wasn't marsh gas. It wasn't
• 9:26
  Speaker: hunters with lanterns. It was
• 9:27
  Speaker: the spirit of the old miser himself. He'd come
• 9:30
  Speaker: back to guard the gold. No one
• 9:33
  Speaker: ever found the miser's gold, and
• 9:35
  Speaker: no one ever caught the light. After
• 9:38
  Speaker: that
• 9:38
  Speaker: final hunt, the story slipped out of the newspapers and into
• 9:41
  Speaker: local legend. Now, if
• 9:43
  Speaker: you find yourself out on Kratzville Road
• 9:45
  Speaker: after dark, when the winter
• 9:47
  Speaker: chill sets in, you may find
• 9:49
  Speaker: yourself slowing down, looking twice
• 9:51
  Speaker: into the shadows, hoping to
• 9:54
  Speaker: catch a glimpse of the Kratzville Phantom.
• 9:58
  Speaker: Thank you
• 9:59
  Speaker: for listening to this episode of River City Mystery. Until next
• 10:02
  Speaker: time, take care.