For Raleigh natives, this might be a local urban legend that is common knowledge. While I’ve been in Raleigh for about six years now, I’m still learning about new things about this city. I’m always up to hearing interesting ghost stories, especially local stories. Majority of cities around the world has some sort of local myth or legend. Some of the most popular ones include the ghostly hitchhiker, a woman in white, and a crybaby bridge. Have you noticed that almost every town has a crybaby bridge legend? Well, in Raleigh’s case, it’s Crybaby Lane. I first read about it on Candid Slice, and thankfully the author, Heather Leah, had done a LOT of research and gave me a lot of resources to use when researching this legend.

The Legend

I’ve heard numerous opinions on Crybaby Lane. I’ve even had a local told me that the story was completely made up in order to create some sort of local ghost story. For those of you who are unfamiliar, here is the premise of the legend. A Catholic orphanage burned down in 1958 because some escapees from Dorthea Dix started lighting things on fire. According to legend, several children lost their lives either from the flames or the escaped mental patients. It’s a rather gory legend that puts mental health patients in a bad light. Today, if you visit the site, you’ll hear ghostly cries of the children as they scream to be saved. People who live near the orphanage claim to smell sulfur even though nothing is on fire. There is also a legend of a gatekeeper who protects the entrance to Crybaby Lane.

The first odd thing I noticed with Crybaby Lane is that no one could agree on the location. Besides Pattison’s information, the most common thing I hear is that it is near Dorthea Dix, it’s by Dix, it’s near Dix, it’s AT Dix…the list goes on. I’ve read countless stories of people who wandered around the area and couldn’t find the site. This was worrisome for the orphanage’s existence because usually there is some local who will know where the orphanage was. From my understanding, the buildings were torn down in the 1970s, which isn’t that long ago. Given that modern day record-keeping has improved tremendously for data from the past century, why was finding Crybaby Lane so confusing? Thankfully, I ran into Heather Leah’s article about Crybaby Lane, and all of her work gave me the shortcut I needed to really dive deep into this legend.

The History

The Catholic orphanage was founded by Father Thomas Price. He bought the land off of Western Boulevard in the 1890s and built a chapel there. After seeing children suffering because of their families’ poverty, he opened an orphanage in 1898/1899 with his sister, Sister Mary Agnes Price, called the Catholic Orphanage of Nazareth. As many as 250 children lived there during the Great Depression. Not all of the children there had deceased parents, most were there because their parents could no longer afford to take care of them. The orphanage closed in the 1970s. There are some discrepancies when it comes to the year. One website says that the orphanage was founded in 1898, and then the seminary followed in 1902. Apparently, there was a reunion in 1982 where 200 people gathered, and many were old enough to talk about the babies that were left at the orphanage during the Great Depression. I was really excited to find a blog where former residents of the orphanage shared their old photos and stories from living there. Sadly, it hasn’t been updated since 2014. But, I found a wealth of info, photos, and a glimpse of what life must have been like at the orphanage.

The Facts

I am currently still in the process of trying to find proof of the 1958 fire. I haven’t found it yet, and will update when I do. The location did have several fires that happened over the span of its existence. There was an article in the News & Observer that talked about a fire that broke out on October 29, 1905 at the orphanage. This is supported with newspaper clippings you’ll see here. The fire was so bad that a priest jumped out of windows to get to safety, and he ended up permanently crippled. There were three students who were sleeping on the fourth floor when the fire broke out, and they had no choice but to jump out the window as well. It was a 45 foot drop, enough to cause serious injuries and even death. The priests were spreading mattresses to cushion their fall. Timothy Wallace, who was 21 years old, and another student, jumped with injuries, but they survived. However, 16-year old John Gladish ended up missing the mattresses and died from his injuries the following Sunday. Gladish was the only casualty of the 1905 fire.

There was another fire in 1912 in the stables, but no one was injured or killed. There was a fire noted in 1961 after a priest was attempting to burn a wasps’ nest and burned the rectory to the ground. Unfortunately, some records of the graves at the orphanage graveyard burned with it. Father Price left Nazareth in 1911, and then died in 1919 China on an international mission trip after his appendix burst. There is a movement at the moment to get Father Price canonized and beatified, and he was inducted into the Raleigh Hall of Fame in 2018.

The Graveyard

John Gladish and others were buried at the cemetery at the orphanage. But, what is really disturbing, is that these graves are now unmarked and seemed to have totally disappeared. In the early eighties, an NCSU student by the name of Dean Ruedrich took walks through the graveyard. He found around 20 or 30 stones, with three people dying on Christmas Day. 30 years later, while Ruedrich was working on restoring and repairing Mount Hope after a tornado, visitors asked him about the Catholic orphanage graves.

Ruedrich had to compare aerial maps of Raleigh and traced the graveyard. According to him, he thinks the graveyard was at the corner of Main Campus Drive and Partners Way. Supposedly, the graves have been moved to St. Joseph’s Cemetery in New Bern, where there are 14 unmarked graves with crosses on them. For more information on these forgotten graves, check out the News & Observer article. It is a bit unsettling considered that these remains were entrusted to the Catholic Church and then forgotten.

The Land Today

The Catholic Diocese donated a portion of the land to Cardinal Gibbons High School in 1962. Then, a substantial portion of land near Dorthea Dix was bought by North Carolina State University in 1988. Today, the buildings are gone and replaced by modern buildings and the new cathedral. According to Kate Pattison of the Raleigh Public Record, the original orphanage building became the home for the Catholic Diocese of Raleigh and still stands to this day. Granted, her write up was dated back to 2009…but that is recent enough where a building could be remembered. From my understanding, the Catholic Diocese is now located in North Raleigh, about 10 minutes from where I live.

According to WRAL.com, the new Holy Name of Jesus Cathedral apparently sits on the former site. Again, first it was the office for the Catholic Diocese, now the new cathedral sits on the same site. From what I can see on Google Maps, it appears Crybaby Lane has been paved over in efforts to provide another entrance to the massive cathedral. This was later confirmed by Heather. According to Heather, there is a stone left of the orphanage, but that’s about it. Considering how much of an impact Father Price made on the area and how massive of a presence that the orphanage had, it would be ludicrous to allow this part of history to be paved over and forgotten. If you look at the satellite version of Google Maps, it hasn’t been updated yet and you can still see the old site. You can tell it’s outdated because the new cathedral isn’t on the satellite image.

Anyway, despite the confusing history about the Catholic Orphanage of Nazareth, Crybaby Lane, the haunted orphanage, whatever you want to call it, there is truly a diamond in the rough tucked away in South Raleigh that is worth researching.

Sources

Nazareth Stories: A blog run by former inhabitants of the orphanage where they shared personal stories and photos.

Candid Slice – Ghost Hunt! Crybaby Lane Sliced Open

Father Thomas Price Inducted into the Raleigh Hall of Fame

WRAL – Cathedral sits on the former site of the Catholic orphanage

News & Observer – Cemetery for Catholic orphanage, but no one knows where they are now

Legeros – Fire at the Catholic Orphanage – October 29, 1905

Raleigh Public Record – Nazareth: Orphans, Ghosts, and a Saint

The post The Mysterious Case of Raleigh’s Crybaby Lane appeared first on Association of Paranormal Study.

I hesitated.

I am an avid fan of anything and everything scary and spooky. I have an affinity for serial killers and slasher flics. I’m a paranormal investigator, and I’ve been in a few of the most haunted places in the nation…but, what scares me? If we take politics out of the mix not many things, in fact, frighten me. I’m a researcher, I run towards the unknown, not away from it. There is one thing, however, that makes the hair on my neck rise and affects the way my bedroom is arranged, because I have an irrational fear of being beside windows or doors to sleep. What, you ask, could send this hardened soul into the throws of fear? Aliens. There. I said it. I am deathly afraid of the little grays.

I was about 13 years old when I first read Whitley Strieber’s ‘Communion’ and I was hooked. The thought that there could possibly be another, seriously advanced species, living amongst the stars and casually slipping in and out of our homes and lives just really affected me at a young age. In retrospect, probably too young of an age. These days, Whitley Strieber has been called a hoax; an author just trying to sell books. But in the 80’s and 90’s his accounts of ‘The Visitor’s’ as he called him, spoke to me. When Strieber’s book came out the world of Ufology was set abuzz. Most people were expecting a book full of abduction tales and that is not what they got. Strieber makes it clear that he was not pandering to the worldview of aliens at the time and his ideas gave many in the ufology field pause. He introduced the idea that aliens may not actually be extraterrestrial after all and suggests that maybe they are something so advanced that our basic comprehension cannot grasp it, that we, as humans are simply too basic to understand. He discussed synchronicities, the human soul and the connections between aliens and the afterlife. He also linked aliens with occult, doppelgangers and supernatural experiences and suggested that abductions may not be as they appear. A little Google search will lead to many sites and videos by Strieber. His latest book, The Afterlife Revolution, was released in December of 2017 and there are numerous videos of interviews with him in which he discusses his abduction experiences.

I live in the mountains of Western North Carolina and there is no shortage of UFO sightings in my area, as North Carolina is in the top 10 states in the country for UFO sightings. As of late, it appears that Cashiers, NC has become quite the hotspot for spotting UFO’s and there are quite a few books and websites dedicated to sightings there. The National UFO Reporting Center reports that there have been 2,822 sightings in North Carolina since the 1940’s. Again, a simple Google search will fill your evening with a plethora of videos and commentary on local sightings. I know you are dying to ask so I will answer: Yes, I have seen some things in the sky that are beyond anything that I can explain. Does that mean that I saw an alien spaceship? I wouldn’t exactly go that far but I have seen an unidentified flying object, on more than one occasion. I can promise you that I double locked my doors and laid in bed thinking that if the aliens every looked back at me…my locks wouldn’t matter.

In essence, I believe that is why the idea of aliens bothers me so much. They could be anywhere. They could be the movements in the dark that we call Shadow People, they could be the ghosts that talk to us through EVP’s, they could be responsible for any high strangeness that occurs in our lives. They could also be the figures we call Angels and Gods and that concept could change everything we think we know about religion and the afterlife. Whitley planted it in my head that the more you look into the alien phenomenon the more they begin to look at you and that aligns directly with Friedrich Nietzsche’s belief that you should “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” It is with that I will leave you. If you are interested in learning more about the alien phenomenon, I will tell you, the truth is out there…. even if we probably shouldn’t look for it.

The post Aliens: It’s Not That Simple appeared first on Association of Paranormal Study.

Was a picture taken? Most likely not. But to be fair, I didn’t have a camera during some of my most remarkable experiences.

I don’t know what Bruner and Bigfoot 911 saw. It’s interesting considering that there are a lot of sightings in North Carolina. There’s even a museum in Littleton, NC dedicated to Bigfoot and cryptozoology. But with all of the technology we have today, why haven’t we caught a satellite image of Bigfoot at the very least? I remain skeptical, as you can see. But I’m doing my best to keep my mind open. It’s hard to even take DNA samples of unknown furs and cells because we don’t have a baseline for the creature. Yet, if Bigfoot is real, I hope it’s happy with its little Bigfoot family and eluding hunters like ninjas. Otherwise, the mystery will be solved, and I have a feeling the fun may get sucked out of it.

So to any cryptozoologists, Bigfoot 911, believers, etc: Good luck out there, and don’t hurt whatever you find!

The post Bigfoot Spotted In North Carolina? You Be the Judge! appeared first on Association of Paranormal Study.

Governor Daniel Gould Fowle

The first Governor to inhabit the Executive Mansion was NC Governor Daniel G Fowle.  Sadly, Fowle died in office in 1891, soon after the construction had completed and he had moved into his new home.  He was buried in the famous Oakwood Cemetery, though many believe his spirit never left the Mansion.

The Daniel G Fowle bedroom is on the second floor of the building and was Fowle’s personal bedroom.  As a widower with four children, one of whom was quite young, he found that he often had his children climbing in his bed at night to sleep.  As a large man, he found the bed that was in the room to be not quite adequate in size, so he had a new, oversized bed constructed to accommodate him and his child.  Sadly, shortly after the new bed was installed, Fowle passed away.

However, the bed remained in the home for future Governors to use.  Almost a century later in 1969, Governor Bob Scott moved into the mansion.  He chose to use the Daniel G Fowle room as his bedroom when he moved in.  However, Fowle’s bed remained in that room.  Scott was a far taller man than Fowle and found the bed too short and uncomfortable, so he had it replaced.  Within a short time of moving the bed from the room, Scott and his wife were in bed one night around 10 pm when they began hearing a knocking from the wall behind the headboard of their new bed.  They didn’t think much of it, assuming it was simply the old building.  This changed when they began to hear the knocking, always starting at the same time, always behind the headboard.  The Governor asked maintenance to check on the pipes behind the wall and was shocked to find there were none that ran through that area.  They still were not overly concerned, though it was definitely becoming an annoyance.

Governor Bob Scott

Their attitude towards this changed with one visit.  Former Governor Fowle’s daughter, now an elderly woman, paid the new governor a visit, as was her tradition.  During the call, she insisted he answer one question; was her father’s bed still in his room?

After that encounter, the Scott’s believed that this was the spirit of Governor Fowle communicating his displeasure of moving his bed, each night around 10 pm.  Despite this, Fowle refused to replace the original bed, so the knocking continued every single evening until he left office.  Upon his departure, Fowle’s bed was replaced to the Executive Bedroom, and the knocking immediately ceased.  That is, until 1993 when Governor Jim Hunt claimed the knocking had returned, despite never changing anything in the room at all.  He was quoted in the News and Observer in 1993 saying “I’ve heard him.  I’m trying to establish contact with this ghost.  I haven’t done that yet”.  Two decades later Governor McCrory is also on record saying he believes the ghost of Fowle is still here.  He told Walter Magazine that “he’s a good ghost, I talk to him every night… I know he hears me, I don’t get spooked.  Other people do”.

We’d love to ask Governor Cooper if he has heard the ghost of Daniel Fowle since assuming office.

The post Sweet Dreams: The Haunted Bed of North Carolina’s Executive Mansion appeared first on Association of Paranormal Study.