Latest / River City Mystery - Investigating mysteries in southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and western Kentucky / The Odon Fire Poltergeist
Transcript
- 0:10Speaker: You're listening to. River City
- 0:11Speaker: Mystery podcast, the show that
- 0:13Speaker: delves into the Evansville and
- 0:14Speaker: surrounding Tri-State area's
- 0:16Speaker: mysteries, including unsolved
- 0:18Speaker: crimes, murders, and
- 0:19Speaker: disappearances.
- 0:21Speaker: A show that isn't afraid to jump down the rabbit hole to
- 0:23Speaker: investigate reports of local hauntings, sightings of UFOs and
- 0:26Speaker: cryptids, among other paranormal phenomena, with your host co
- 0:31Speaker: founder of the Humans of Evansville Facebook page.
- 0:34Speaker: Law office worker by day.
- 0:35Speaker: Insomniac researcher of the bizarre by night Matt Deig.
- 0:43Speaker: In tonight's episode, we travel
- 0:45Speaker: to a little town in Daviess
- 0:47Speaker: County, Indiana, known as Odin,
- 0:49Speaker: the site of a decades old
- 0:50Speaker: mystery which the Indiana State
- 0:52Speaker: Fire Marshal referred to as the
- 0:54Speaker: most baffling mystery he had
- 0:56Speaker: ever seen.
- 0:57Speaker: Before he closed the case
- 0:58Speaker: unsolved, a case that has come
- 1:00Speaker: to be known as the Odin Fire
- 1:03Speaker: Poltergeist.
- 1:07Speaker: As I was going through my list of of potential mysteries to to
- 1:11Speaker: look into, I've always been a fan of looking into curses and
- 1:15Speaker: cursed people and teams and ground and things like that.
- 1:20Speaker: This one definitely fits the
- 1:22Speaker: bill of perhaps being cursed
- 1:25Speaker: ground or property that's
- 1:27Speaker: cursed.
- 1:28Speaker: I don't know what your opinion is on curses or cursed people or
- 1:32Speaker: that sort of a thing, but sometimes there are certain
- 1:35Speaker: people or families, um, grounds that bad things seem to happen
- 1:42Speaker: for whether, whether it's, you know, brought upon by themselves
- 1:45Speaker: or if there is an actual curse or, or whatever.
- 1:49Speaker: It's hard to deny that some
- 1:51Speaker: people and things and teams seem
- 1:54Speaker: to have fallen victim to the
- 1:56Speaker: curse.
- 1:57Speaker: Just off the top of my head, I'm
- 1:58Speaker: thinking of the Kennedy family
- 2:00Speaker: curse.
- 2:01Speaker: There's all kinds of tragedy that has befallen the Kennedys
- 2:05Speaker: from JFK to his brother Robert.
- 2:07Speaker: And there's a whole list of other tragedies that you start
- 2:10Speaker: to wonder, what are the chances of all of these horrible things
- 2:14Speaker: happening to one family?
- 2:16Speaker: You've got the curse of King Tut's tomb.
- 2:20Speaker: The people who passed away when they opened the tomb, the Billy
- 2:24Speaker: goat curse from the cubs.
- 2:25Speaker: When William Cyanose brought his
- 2:28Speaker: Billy Goat Murphy, to the
- 2:30Speaker: nineteen forty five World
- 2:31Speaker: Series, he was kicked out of the
- 2:33Speaker: game.
- 2:34Speaker: On his way out, he cursed the team, and I believe the team did
- 2:38Speaker: not see a World Series for another seventy one years before
- 2:41Speaker: they broke that curse.
- 2:43Speaker: Some people assign that to the curse.
- 2:45Speaker: Other people to say that's what it was.
- 2:47Speaker: Just a seventy one year drought
- 2:48Speaker: and nothing to do with the
- 2:49Speaker: curse.
- 2:50Speaker: I know some Indianapolis Colts fans secretly wonder if maybe
- 2:54Speaker: Peyton Manning didn't mutter some kind of curse or two on the
- 2:57Speaker: way out the door when he was let go from the Colts.
- 2:59Speaker: Don't get me started on that, though.
- 3:02Speaker: Now, the grounds that the Odin fire poltergeist that we're
- 3:05Speaker: going to be talking about tonight occurred on is it
- 3:08Speaker: occurred in Odin, Indiana.
- 3:10Speaker: And we need to talk a little bit about the history of this
- 3:13Speaker: ground, because once we start looking at the history of this
- 3:17Speaker: particular piece of ground, we start to wonder if maybe this
- 3:21Speaker: area isn't cursed or this piece of property is cursed.
- 3:24Speaker: Um, certainly an argument could be made that it is about twenty
- 3:29Speaker: years prior to the US Civil War, a Tennessee native named
- 3:32Speaker: Marshall Ketchum moved to the Daviess County, Indiana area at
- 3:36Speaker: that time that he moved there.
- 3:38Speaker: It wasn't known as Odin.
- 3:40Speaker: That area in Daviess County was
- 3:42Speaker: known as Clarksburg after George
- 3:44Speaker: Rogers Clark.
- 3:46Speaker: Just after the end of the US Civil War, Marshall built a two
- 3:50Speaker: story frame house and lived there with his wife, Margaret,
- 3:53Speaker: and their children.
- 3:55Speaker: The house that Marshall built is the actual property.
- 3:59Speaker: That's the grounds that the Odin
- 4:02Speaker: Fire Poltergeist will occur at
- 4:03Speaker: much later.
- 4:04Speaker: But we're.
- 4:05Speaker: talking about, you know, we're kind of going into the history
- 4:08Speaker: of this ground.
- 4:09Speaker: Mr. Marshall was the first one
- 4:11Speaker: to build on that property with
- 4:13Speaker: his wife.
- 4:14Speaker: They had two children together, at least two children that were
- 4:18Speaker: listed in the eighteen sixty census in the Davis County area.
- 4:22Speaker: He built the house about four miles northwest of town, right
- 4:27Speaker: off the main road.
- 4:28Speaker: The first tragedy to strike on
- 4:30Speaker: this property occurred in the
- 4:32Speaker: eighteen eighties, when five
- 4:33Speaker: members of the Marshall family
- 4:35Speaker: passed away from the burning
- 4:36Speaker: fever, which it's believed that
- 4:39Speaker: was most likely typhus, the
- 4:41Speaker: burning fever.
- 4:43Speaker: And according to an obituary in the Indianapolis News, Marshall
- 4:47Speaker: was not one of those who passed away, and he died later in
- 4:50Speaker: eighteen ninety nine.
- 4:52Speaker: After Mr. Marshall passed away.
- 4:55Speaker: The home was sold to a Southerner named Andrew Weichel
- 4:58Speaker: and his wife, Andrew Weichel, was a spiritualist, so he.
- 5:03Speaker: He thought he could communicate with the dead, end.
- 5:06Speaker: So he goes into the property with this belief already.
- 5:11Speaker: And he and his wife had two sons, and unfortunately, one of
- 5:15Speaker: those two sons was shot to death in a hunting accident.
- 5:21Speaker: This really hit Mr. Wickle pretty badly.
- 5:24Speaker: He was inconsolable and grieved
- 5:26Speaker: over the loss of his son for
- 5:28Speaker: many years.
- 5:30Speaker: He actually had his son buried a few hundred yards west of the
- 5:33Speaker: house in a casket that he had custom built, with an embedded
- 5:37Speaker: glass window so the child's face could be seen.
- 5:40Speaker: So he had buried the son in a casket with, I'm guessing, some
- 5:46Speaker: sort of a cavern or some sort of a shaft where he could actually
- 5:50Speaker: shine a light down or something to see his son's face.
- 5:55Speaker: Um, even though he had been buried in this casket.
- 5:58Speaker: Not creepy at all.
- 5:59Speaker: And I think that his wife was not a huge fan of this idea.
- 6:05Speaker: I think she went along with it
- 6:06Speaker: because, you know, he was so
- 6:08Speaker: inconsolable.
- 6:09Speaker: And, you know, this was the way he was.
- 6:11Speaker: Her husband was dealing with the grief also.
- 6:14Speaker: Her husband claimed their deceased son had made his
- 6:18Speaker: presence known to to them and or to him anyway, and that he
- 6:23Speaker: regularly had conversations with his deceased son after Mr.
- 6:28Speaker: Whipple passed away.
- 6:30Speaker: It was rumored that his wife had the boy's casket dug up and
- 6:34Speaker: moved to a nearby cemetery so she wouldn't have to, you know,
- 6:37Speaker: see that in the backyard all the time, which understandable.
- 6:41Speaker: Years later, in nineteen thirty, the property is for sale.
- 6:46Speaker: I don't know if what happened with Mrs. Whipple.
- 6:50Speaker: If she just decided to get out of there or what.
- 6:53Speaker: The records show that in the.
- 6:54Speaker: In nineteen thirty, the property
- 6:56Speaker: is purchased by a William
- 6:58Speaker: Hechler and he lived there at
- 7:00Speaker: the property with his wife,
- 7:02Speaker: Minnie, and their five children,
- 7:04Speaker: and they lived there for a
- 7:06Speaker: decade with.
- 7:07Speaker: And there really weren't any incidents to talk about.
- 7:10Speaker: That all changed dramatically in
- 7:12Speaker: the summer of nineteen forty,
- 7:14Speaker: however.
- 7:15Speaker: Don Cosby wrote an article in The Washington Times Herald in
- 7:18Speaker: October twenty ten focusing on the Odin Fire Poltergeist case.
- 7:23Speaker: Don Cosby was selected as the Davies County historian by the
- 7:27Speaker: Indiana Historical Society.
- 7:29Speaker: He's written several books on the topics related to Davies
- 7:33Speaker: County and Southern Indiana, such as revisiting the past,
- 7:37Speaker: legends, legacy and folklore, and My Scrapbook.
- 7:41Speaker: If you're interested in checking out those books, check out the
- 7:43Speaker: links in my show notes at River city Mystery dot com.
- 7:49Speaker: And I actually had the brief opportunity to speak with Don,
- 7:52Speaker: and he was able to help me out with a few questions I had,
- 7:55Speaker: which I very much appreciate him taking his time out of his day
- 7:57Speaker: to answer those for me.
- 7:58Speaker: He's ninety years old, but still on top of his game, and you'll
- 8:02Speaker: hear a little bit of our interview later in this episode.
- 8:05Speaker: This is the article that Don wrote in The Washington Times
- 8:08Speaker: Herald in October twenty ten about the Odin fire Poltergeist.
- 8:14Speaker: The Washington Herald published a rather remarkable, if not
- 8:17Speaker: unbelievable, story of details of the event that were not only
- 8:20Speaker: witnessed, but were verified by neighbors who visited the home
- 8:24Speaker: of William Hackler.
- 8:26Speaker: Friday, June twenty first, nineteen forty.
- 8:29Speaker: Personally, I would probably be one of the first to suspect a
- 8:33Speaker: staged event by the family.
- 8:35Speaker: But after authorities had investigated all possible
- 8:37Speaker: scenarios, this story still remains a mystery.
- 8:41Speaker: You therefore, are permitted to
- 8:43Speaker: accept the story as fact or, if
- 8:45Speaker: you choose, dismiss it as total
- 8:47Speaker: nonsense.
- 8:49Speaker: William Hackler lived on a large
- 8:51Speaker: two story house on top of a
- 8:52Speaker: hill, surrounded by large pine
- 8:54Speaker: trees about four miles northwest
- 8:56Speaker: of Odin.
- 8:58Speaker: The old house has been gone for
- 8:59Speaker: years, of course, but some of
- 9:01Speaker: the older folks in town may
- 9:02Speaker: remember it.
- 9:04Speaker: One of the articles stated that the old house was located on a
- 9:07Speaker: high hill about a hundred yards off the road just east of the
- 9:10Speaker: abandoned Hastings School.
- 9:14Speaker: Mr. Hechler drove a truck and collected milk from local
- 9:17Speaker: farmers, but was getting back into town around nine a m he was
- 9:21Speaker: told that the Odin fire truck had gone to his house earlier,
- 9:24Speaker: but everything was okay.
- 9:25Speaker: Now he decided to finish the
- 9:27Speaker: rest of his route, but
- 9:29Speaker: everything was not all right, as
- 9:31Speaker: he later found out when he got
- 9:33Speaker: home around ten a m and until
- 9:35Speaker: eleven that night, he was kept
- 9:37Speaker: busy watching for fires to break
- 9:39Speaker: out.
- 9:40Speaker: Dorothy Hechler found the first fire in an upstairs room.
- 9:45Speaker: The strip of wallpaper just ignited on the wall.
- 9:48Speaker: Of course, the fire department thought of a defective chimney,
- 9:51Speaker: but there was no chimney even close to that wall.
- 9:55Speaker: Also remember, it was June and there was no fire in the stove.
- 9:59Speaker: They tore off the plaster and there was no chimney behind it.
- 10:03Speaker: The second fire broke out on the opposite side of the house.
- 10:06Speaker: Again firemen tore plaster and lathes off down to the studs,
- 10:10Speaker: finding no evidence of where the fire had traveled underneath the
- 10:13Speaker: lathes, or between the ceiling and floor of the second story.
- 10:16Speaker: It had simply just broken out, just like the first.
- 10:20Speaker: This was on the west side of the
- 10:22Speaker: building, and it was feared the
- 10:24Speaker: whole house might catch fire,
- 10:26Speaker: but water from a cistern
- 10:27Speaker: prevented the fires from
- 10:29Speaker: spreading, and the family were
- 10:30Speaker: able to put them out as they
- 10:31Speaker: occurred.
- 10:33Speaker: Hechler said from that time on all day Friday, it was just one
- 10:37Speaker: fire after another.
- 10:39Speaker: Most of these fires were small but appeared to be spontaneous.
- 10:43Speaker: One fire occurred inside a desk where papers caught fire.
- 10:48Speaker: Another, while two women from Odin had stopped to visit.
- 10:51Speaker: Curtains on a window directly
- 10:53Speaker: behind them suddenly burst into
- 10:55Speaker: flames.
- 10:56Speaker: But strangely, the window shades were not burned.
- 11:00Speaker: Then suddenly, the curtains
- 11:01Speaker: across the room hanging out a
- 11:03Speaker: window ignited in the same
- 11:05Speaker: fashion.
- 11:06Speaker: Another fire broke out in a bedroom paper that had been
- 11:10Speaker: placed between the springs and the mattress broke out into
- 11:14Speaker: flames, destroying the mattress.
- 11:16Speaker: A calendar in another room burst into flames, but strangely it.
- 11:20Speaker: It did no damage to the wallpaper.
- 11:22Speaker: In another room, a pair of trousers hanging on a hook
- 11:26Speaker: against the wall caught fire.
- 11:28Speaker: One of the neighbours said, if I
- 11:30Speaker: had not been in that house at
- 11:31Speaker: that time and seen it with my
- 11:32Speaker: own eyes, I would not have
- 11:34Speaker: believed it.
- 11:35Speaker: Another person said, the devil is in that house.
- 11:39Speaker: Mr. Hackler said, I don't believe in spooks, so the only
- 11:42Speaker: thing I was afraid of that night was fire breaking out that way.
- 11:46Speaker: In the course of the next few days, hundreds of people visited
- 11:49Speaker: the Hackler home, going away completely mystified about the
- 11:52Speaker: actual cause of the fires.
- 11:54Speaker: All these fires had one thing in common they had no explanation.
- 11:59Speaker: Some said the house was haunted.
- 12:01Speaker: Others said it was cursed.
- 12:03Speaker: One such story could lend credence to the fact that it was
- 12:06Speaker: told that the house did have quite a background.
- 12:09Speaker: Mr. Cosby goes on to talk about the, uh, Spiritualist who lived
- 12:13Speaker: there, which I've already.
- 12:14Speaker: I've already talked about.
- 12:17Speaker: The entire heckler family was
- 12:18Speaker: quite shaken, and Virginia
- 12:20Speaker: Hackler, a ten year old
- 12:21Speaker: daughter, was especially
- 12:22Speaker: frightened.
- 12:24Speaker: In fact, being unable to know what else the family might be
- 12:27Speaker: required to endure.
- 12:28Speaker: The family slept in the front yard the night after the fires.
- 12:32Speaker: Even at that, I'm sure sleep
- 12:34Speaker: didn't come easy for the family
- 12:35Speaker: that night.
- 12:37Speaker: Later, heckler, in an effort to
- 12:39Speaker: find the answers to the problem,
- 12:40Speaker: contacted the state fire marshal
- 12:42Speaker: for assistance.
- 12:43Speaker: Oddly enough, eight years later, on October twenty third,
- 12:46Speaker: nineteen forty eight, at Macomb, Illinois, the home of Charles
- 12:50Speaker: Willey experienced almost exactly the same situation as
- 12:53Speaker: the heckler family did.
- 12:55Speaker: The Willey family had numerous small fires.
- 12:58Speaker: However, they finally lost two barns and their home to fires.
- 13:02Speaker: To my knowledge, no satisfactory logical causes were ever found
- 13:05Speaker: to explain the fires.
- 13:07Speaker: The mystery continues.
- 13:08Speaker: Yet today the Travelers
- 13:11Speaker: Insurance Company used the
- 13:13Speaker: heckler story in an ad in the
- 13:16Speaker: April nineteenth, nineteen forty
- 13:17Speaker: one edition of Collier's
- 13:18Speaker: Magazine.
- 13:20Speaker: The ad stated under a photo with a little story about the twenty
- 13:23Speaker: eight fires, the ad stated, it is very unlikely you will ever
- 13:27Speaker: be the victim of a mysterious siege of fires like this, but
- 13:31Speaker: one fire without enough insurance, properly written, is
- 13:34Speaker: one too many.
- 13:36Speaker: As I was doing research on this
- 13:38Speaker: poltergeist case, I wanted to
- 13:40Speaker: find out where exactly this farm
- 13:42Speaker: was.
- 13:43Speaker: Obviously there had to be a well
- 13:46Speaker: known area, or people had to in
- 13:48Speaker: that region know where the farm
- 13:50Speaker: was.
- 13:51Speaker: I couldn't find.
- 13:52Speaker: I looked through many, many stories and all of the stories
- 13:55Speaker: pretty much say the same things.
- 13:56Speaker: And there were very few references to the actual
- 13:59Speaker: location of this farm.
- 14:02Speaker: So I reached out to Mr. Cosby and asked if he knew, since he's
- 14:05Speaker: from Daviess County, if he knew exactly where this farm was.
- 14:08Speaker: I wanted to take a little day trip up there to Daviess County
- 14:11Speaker: and see it for myself.
- 14:13Speaker: See where this farm was now.
- 14:15Speaker: There were other stories.
- 14:16Speaker: This was not in Mr. Cosby's story, so I don't know.
- 14:19Speaker: I can't verify whether this is true or not, but there were
- 14:22Speaker: other stories that stated that the hecklers moved.
- 14:26Speaker: They they actually tore their house down and moved their home
- 14:30Speaker: a few miles up the road.
- 14:33Speaker: Mr. Cosby did not confirm this, and he'll explain that here in a
- 14:37Speaker: minute, but it appears as though there's no house there now.
- 14:42Speaker: So either they.
- 14:43Speaker: Either the house was demolished for whatever reason, or maybe.
- 14:49Speaker: Maybe they did rebuild the same home a few miles up the road.
- 14:54Speaker: That is kind of unknown, but I
- 14:56Speaker: did ask Mr. Cosby where the home
- 14:59Speaker: was, where was this piece of
- 15:00Speaker: ground?
- 15:01Speaker: And this was his response.
- 15:02Speaker: I have talked to a couple of
- 15:04Speaker: people in that area, older
- 15:07Speaker: people.
- 15:08Speaker: I'm ninety years old, and I, I
- 15:13Speaker: talked to a couple of people
- 15:14Speaker: that are about my age, I'm a
- 15:17Speaker: little less.
- 15:19Speaker: I am aware of the of the case, the poltergeist case, and um.
- 15:28Speaker: But as far as we are concerned, we are unable to definitely
- 15:35Speaker: locate that particular farm.
- 15:40Speaker: I went on to ask Mr. Cosby if he
- 15:41Speaker: knew what became of the heckler
- 15:43Speaker: family.
- 15:44Speaker: Like I said, there are some stories that they rebuilt, uh, a
- 15:49Speaker: mile or so up the road.
- 15:51Speaker: And since Mr. Cosby is the
- 15:53Speaker: Davies County historian, I
- 15:54Speaker: thought he might have some
- 15:55Speaker: insight on what became of the
- 15:56Speaker: hecklers.
- 15:58Speaker: This was his response.
- 15:59Speaker: I best I can figure out is that is that they did not live in the
- 16:05Speaker: in the county very long.
- 16:07Speaker: I kind of figured really that they they moved, you know, the
- 16:12Speaker: entire family moved and and there haven't been any hecklers
- 16:17Speaker: in Davis County.
- 16:18Speaker: For as long as I know.
- 16:20Speaker: I received a letter from Don Cosby's son in law, Mark Smith.
- 16:26Speaker: Mark did a little bit of research and was able to provide
- 16:29Speaker: me with what his best estimate was for the actual location of
- 16:33Speaker: the Heckler Farm.
- 16:35Speaker: And he sent me a Google image
- 16:38Speaker: with an actual ping of the exact
- 16:40Speaker: location.
- 16:41Speaker: So I took a little road trip up there and checked it out.
- 16:45Speaker: It's there's nothing, there's nothing there now.
- 16:47Speaker: It's basically just farm ground.
- 16:49Speaker: I'll post some pictures at on the show notes.
- 16:53Speaker: River City Mystery dot com slash four.
- 16:55Speaker: If you want to check them out.
- 16:56Speaker: It's really not anything to nothing of note, but I did.
- 17:00Speaker: I was just curious.
- 17:01Speaker: I wanted to see what was there, if there was anything remaining.
- 17:05Speaker: So I appreciate Mark Smith's
- 17:07Speaker: efforts to get me the exact
- 17:09Speaker: location.
- 17:10Speaker: Very much appreciated.
- 17:12Speaker: Well, that brings this mystery to a close.
- 17:14Speaker: And thank you for joining me tonight.
- 17:17Speaker: My next episode, I'm going to be
- 17:18Speaker: focusing on an unsolved murder
- 17:20Speaker: in Henderson, Kentucky,
- 17:22Speaker: something I've been looking
- 17:23Speaker: into, and it's quite a baffling
- 17:26Speaker: case.
- 17:27Speaker: And I will probably also be doing another update on the
- 17:31Speaker: Teresa Rideout case.
- 17:32Speaker: I've been contacted by some of
- 17:35Speaker: Teresa Rideout's family and also
- 17:38Speaker: some of Jack Barnett's family
- 17:40Speaker: members.
- 17:42Speaker: I might just do an update episode on that at some point in
- 17:45Speaker: the future as well.
- 17:48Speaker: You're all invited to join my discord server at RiverCity
- 17:51Speaker: Mystery.com/discord where we discuss the episodes.
- 17:56Speaker: If you have any topic suggestions or just want to hang
- 17:59Speaker: out with people who are also interested in these similar
- 18:01Speaker: topics, you're welcome to join.
- 18:04Speaker: And that brings us to a close.
- 18:06Speaker: Until next time, take care.