The Hauntings, Horror & Hoax of America's Original
"Most Haunted" House
For many years, stories circulated about what was
called the "most haunted house in America". To look at the place,
where it was located on the north side of Pittsburgh, one might never suspect
what dark secrets lingered inside. There were tales of bizarre murder, human
experimentation and gruesome death told about the house and visits to the
residence inspired horror stories and even a great inventor’s fascination with
death and the afterworld. If any building deserved the reputation for being
America’s most haunted house, it was this one!
Or so it seemed anyway… In truth, the “House on
Ridge Avenue” was not one of America’s greatest haunts, but one of its greatest
paranormal hoaxes instead. Despite a few others that have taken credit for the
debunking of this story, I originally printed this exposé back in 2004. The
blog posted here is merely a slight update of some of the true facts in the
case.
The photo of a Pittsburgh mansion that I used to illustrate my original debunking article about the "House on Ridge Avenue," which has since (hilariously) been used by a number of "paranormal websites" to tell this story as if it was true.
The story of the infamous "House on Ridge
Avenue" has always been one of my favorite tales of ghosts, horror and the
supernatural. I ran across this story for the first time back in 1979 and never
forgot it. It chilled me to the bone and perhaps because I was at such an
impressionable age then, I never doubted that the story was true. In the years
that followed, my interest in the story never faded and as time passed, I
should have realized that something was not quite right about it, but I never
did. Or perhaps I never wanted to realize it or to doubt that the tale was not
an authentic one. I refused to see that the story of the "Original Most
Haunted House in America" seemed almost too good to be true. It seemed too
good to be true - simply because it was.
I can't help but be embarrassed now as I look back
and wonder how I didn't miss the signs in the first place. The story of the
House on Ridge Avenue has appeared in at least one of my books on ghosts and I
have even wrote a couple of magazine articles about it as well. By late 2003,
my faith in the story had wavered and I became determined to try and track down
the details of the story. It can sometimes be difficult to trace a story that
occurred quite some distance away from you (which is my only excuse for being
hoodwinked by the story for as long as I was) but I decided not to let the
miles between Illinois and Pittsburgh stand in the way. If someone knew the
facts behind this story, I wanted to find them.
As I began contacting people who should have been
aware of the salient facts behind the story of the Ridge Avenue house, I
realized that those who claimed knowledge were simply repeating back to me the
same account that I had already heard. They cited the same sources and as far
as I can tell, this "local legend" first appeared in the book Haunted Houses by Richard Winer and
Nancy Osborn. As this had long been one of my favorite books, I was dismayed
when I discovered that Mr. Winer was as fooled by the story as the rest of us
were. I have been unable to discover where the authors may have first heard the
story themselves.
As I continued my search, I found the same story
regurgitated back to me over and over again. People who claimed to recall the
details behind the events suddenly forgot them and witnesses who stated that
they had information that went beyond the standard accounts became bewildered
when the story did not match the historical details of the case.
All that I can say is that I hope you enjoy the
recounting - and the debunking - of the legend that follows. This was not a
story that I wanted to tell but as stated before, we cannot be afraid of the
truth. If stories that are show to be fraudulent are reported as real, then how
can we expect the real stories to be taken seriously?
THE LEGEND: PART 1
According to the stories, the House on Ridge Avenue
was located in a quiet residential neighborhood in Manchester, on the north
edge of Pittsburgh. A man named Charles Wright Congelier built it in the 1860s.
He had made a fortune for himself in Texas following the Civil War and such men
were commonly referred to in the south as "Carpetbaggers." They made
a lot of money preying on the broken economy in the former Confederacy.
Congelier left Texas by river steamer, taking with him his Mexican wife, Lyda,
and a servant girl named Essie. When the steamer docked in Pittsburgh for coal,
Congelier decided that the Pennsylvania town looked like a good place to
settle. The three of them left the ship and Congelier purchased a lot and began
construction of the house.
A few months later, the new brick and mortar
mansion was completed. It was located at 1129 Ridge Avenue and was considered
one of the finest houses in the area. From the expansive lawn, Congelier could
look out and see where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers met to form the
Ohio, offering a breathtaking view. The former Carpetbagger soon became a
respected member of the local business community and his new home became a
frequent site for parties and social gatherings. Then, during the winter of
1871, an event took place that would bloody the location for decades to come.
That winter, as cold and snow settled over the
region, Congelier became embroiled in an affair with his servant girl, Essie.
Whether she was a willing participant or not, Essie soon became a constant bed
partner for her employer. For several months, Lyda Congelier was unaware of the
affair, but when three people reside in the same house, it's only a matter of
time before secrets are revealed.
One afternoon, when Essie did not respond to her
call, Lyda went to the girl's room looking for her. As she came down the
hallway, she could hear heavy breathing and moaning coming from behind the
door. Knowing that her husband was the only man in the house, Lyda became
enraged. She hurried to the kitchen and snatched up both a butcher knife and a
meat cleaver. As she began climbing the stairs back to the servant's room, Lyda
became screaming with rage, which naturally provoked a panic inside of Essie's
bedroom. Before Congelier and the girl could dress themselves and exit the
room, Lyda had already taken up a post outside. When the door opened, she
brought the meat cleaver down on the head of the first person to open it.
Charles Congelier fell to the floor, a cry on his lips and blood streaming from
the wound on his head. As Essie reared back, bellowing in terror, Lyda
proceeded to stab her husband thirty times.
Several days later, a family friend called at the
house and when no one responded to his knock, he opened the door and peered
inside. He called out, but there was no answer in the darkened house. However,
as he entered the foyer, he could hear a faint creaking noise in the parlor. He
called out again, but as there was no answer, he walked further into the house.
Following the odd sound, he entered the parlor and saw Lyda Congelier rocking
back and forth in front of a large bay window. The wooden chair that she rested
in creaked with each backward and forward motion that she made. "Lyda? Is
everything all right?" he spoke to her.
There was no reply. Lyda continued to rock back and
forth in the chair. As her friend drew closer, he could hear her softly
crooning a lullaby under her breath. It was a child's nursery song, he
realized, and he saw a bundle that was wrapped in a blanket in Lyda's arms. She
held it close, as she would hold a baby, rocking it gently. The man felt a
sudden chill course through him. He knew that the Congelier's had no children.
He spoke to her once again, but there was still no
answer. Lyda stared straight ahead at the snow outside, her eyes glazed and
unfocused. He gently leaned over and eased the bundle out of her hands. He
carefully opened the pink blanket and then recoiled with horror, dropping the
bloody bundle onto the floor! It landed on the wooden floorboards with a solid
thud and the contents of the blanket rolled away. The friend fell backwards on
the couch as Essie's bloody head came to halt a short distance away from his
feet!
For more than two decades after, the house on Ridge
Avenue remained empty. Local folks considered the place "tainted" and
avoided it at all costs. Few dared to even trespass on the grounds, although
sometimes small children threw stones at the windows and sang about the "old
battle-ax and her meat-ax.”
THE REAL STORY: PART 1
Like most legends, the story of the house is a
clever blending of fact and fiction, although in this case, there is much more
fancy than fact. To start with, no one named Charles Wright Congelier ever
existed and neither did his wife, Lyda. There is no record of any dealings in
Texas and no record of his ever living in Pittsburgh. In addition, there are no
police or criminal records that state that Lyda murdered her husband and the
servant girl in 1871. The use of a date here adds solidity to the story but it
also makes it easier to check the validity of the tale and there is none.
Secondly, the house that is described in the story
was not a mansion. There really was a house located at 1129 Ridge Avenue but it
was built in the late 1880s, not in the 1860s. It was a standard Manchester row
house, commonly owned by working class people of the day. It must be mentioned
however that the house was later owned by members of the Congelier family, even
though Charles Wright Congelier, and the murderous Lyda, was a figment of a
creative imagination. This is a further blending of the truth, which will be
discussed later.
THE LEGEND: PART 2
In 1892, the house was renovated into an apartment
building to house railroad workers. Most refused to stay in the place for long.
They constantly complained of hearing screams and the sobbing of a woman that
came from empty rooms. Others spoke of the ominous sounds of a rocking chair
and of a woman mumbling old nursery rhymes and lullabies. Within two years, the
house was abandoned once again.
It remained vacant until 1901, when Dr. Adolph C.
Brunrichter purchased the house. The
doctor became something of an enigma in the neighborhood. Although he had been
warned of the past history of the house, he chose to purchase the place anyway
and after moving in, had little to do with the nearby residents. He kept to
himself and was rarely seen by those who lived close to him. Everyone in the
neighborhood watched and held their breath, waiting for something terrible to
happen. They didn't have to wait very long.
On August 12, 1901, the family who lived next door
to the Brunrichter mansion heard a terrified scream coming from the house. When
they ran outside to see what was going on, they saw a bright red flash
illuminate the interior of the mansion. The windows of the house shattered and
glass shot out onto the lawn. The air was filled with the smell of ozone and
the earth under the neighborhood trembled, cracking the sidewalks and knocking
over furniture in the surrounding homes.
By the time the police and the fire department
arrived, a crowd had gathered outside of Brunrichter's house. It was assumed
that the doctor was still inside as no one had seen him leave, but none of the
neighbors were brave enough to go in and check. Finally, a contingent of fire
fighters entered the house in search of Brunrichter. They were unable to find
him, but what they did discover was enough to send even the bravest among them
running for the street outside.
In one of the upstairs bedrooms, a gut-wrenching scene
awaited police investigators. Lying spread-eagled on the blood-soaked bed was
the decomposed, naked body of a young woman. Her head was missing and was later
found in a makeshift laboratory that the doctor had set up in another room.
From what the detectives could determine, Brunrichter had apparently been
experimenting with severed heads. Using electrical equipment, he had been
trying to keep them alive after decapitation. A fault in his equipment had
evidently caused the explosion. The young girl's head was found with several
others and the graves of five women were discovered in the cellar. Each of the
bodies could be matched with one of the heads from the laboratory.
As for Dr. Brunrichter, there was no sign of him.
He had apparently escaped during the confusion following the explosion and had
vanished. A manhunt produced no clues. He had disappeared without leaving a
trace.
In September 1927, an old man was arrested in New
York's Bowery district. He was found wandering in a drunken stupor, living among
the homeless and the street people. He was arrested and booked for public
drunkenness and was taken to the local police station house. Standing in line
with the other dirty and disheveled men, this particular vagrant seemed to give
off what the officers would later recall as a "bad feeling". As the
drunks shuffled along, the policemen entered their names into record one at a
time. When the old man reached the head of the line, the officer asked him his
name.
He replied in a harsh voice, slightly slurred with
a foreign accent. "My name is Adolph Brunrichter," the man said. And
soon, he began to tell stories to the officers at the police station and they
were tales even the most hardened officers would not soon forget.
Brunrichter began by explaining to the officers
that he was once an eminent doctor, a physician who worked diligently to
prolong life. Unfortunately, he could only succeed with his experiments by
ending the lives of certain test subjects. He told of how many years earlier,
he had bought a house in Pittsburgh to which he enticed young women as guests.
Anticipating romance, the women were instead beheaded and then used in
experiments to keep their severed heads alive. Brunrichter told of sex orgies,
torture and murder and then gave the locations of graves for other women who
were not discovered in the cellar of the house. Authorities later checked the
sites, but no bodies were ever found.
Brunrichter was kept behind bars for one month at
Blackwell's Island. Despite newspaper stories that called him the
"Pittsburgh Spook Man", the mad doctor was deemed
"harmless" and was released. On the wall of his cell, scrawled in his
own blood, were the words "What Satan hath wrought, let man beware."
After those fateful words, nothing was ever heard from the man who claimed to
be Dr. Adolph Brunrichter again.
THE REAL STORY: PART 2
The house was built in the late 1880s and while a
working class home, was not used to house railroad workers. During this time,
it was owned by Marie Congelier (who would go on to become the only recorded
death associated with the house) and it was never purchased by anyone named Dr.
Adolph Brunrichter. Like Charles and Lyda Congelier, he never actually existed.
The only mention of Brunrichter that I have ever been able to find in my own
extensive files and books about American crime is in connection to this house.
This seemed rather odd to me since his crimes would have obviously have been
gruesome and lurid enough to garner the attention of reporters and crime
writers. However, there are no listings for him in any books that I could find.
Not content to let it go at that, I also contacted
several noted crime researchers and asked them to check their own files for
mentions or records of Brunrichter. None of them could find anything. Another
check of newspaper and library archives for New York, where papers had
allegedly written of the "Pittsburgh Spook Man" also failed to reveal
any listings. The same problem occurred while trying to search for reports of
the crimes in Pittsburgh as well. There is no mention of the
"explosion" or the discovery of the bodies in the house in the
Pittsburgh newspapers. In addition, there is not a single death record, real
estate record or police record involving anyone named Brunrichter in connection
with the house on Ridge Avenue. The mysterious Dr. Brunrichter vanished without
a trace because he never really existed in the first place.
THE LEGEND: PART 3
After the horrific discoveries in the basement of
the house, the Ridge Avenue mansion was abandoned. It stood empty again for
many years, gaining an even more fearsome reputation. Those with an interest in
psychic phenomena made occasional visits to the place and it came to be
believed that the house was inhabited by a "fearsome presence." One
medium who probed the house, Julia Murray, detected a horrible spirit there and
witnesses who accompanied her to the mansion stated that "objects hurled
by unseen hands barely missed striking her." Murray predicted that the
entity would kill and would eventually extend out beyond the confines of the
house.
In 1920, the stories about the mansion caught the
attention of another man, one of the greatest inventors that America has ever
known. His name was Thomas Alva Edison and in addition to creating the light
bulb, he went to his grave in search of a device that would be able to
communicate with the dead.
Edison was a self-taught genius who began
experimenting with scientific theories as a child. Throughout his life, he
maintained that it was possible to build anything if the right components were
available. This would later include the already mentioned machine. Edison was
not a believer in the supernatural however, nor a proponent of the popular
Spiritualist movement. He had always been an agnostic and although he did not
dispute the philosophies of religion, he didn't necessarily believe in their
truth either. He believed that when a person died, the body decayed but the
intelligence the man possessed lived on. He thought that the so-called
"spirit world" was simply a limbo where disembodied intelligence
waited to move on. He took these paranormal theories one step further by
announcing that he intended to devise a machine that could communicate with
this "limbo.” Edison's announcement appeared in newspapers after his visit
to the house on Ridge Avenue. What happened during his visit to the house is
unknown, but whatever it was, it certainly inspired him to go to great lengths
to create the machine.
According to journals and papers, Edison began
working on the apparatus. The famous magician and friend of Edison's, Joseph
Dunninger, claimed that he was shown a prototype of the machine but few others
ever say they saw it. Edison reportedly continued working on the machine until
his death in October 1931. Did Edison's machine actually exist? And if so,
would it have worked? In the years following his death, curators at both of the
Edison museums in Florida and New Jersey have searched extensively for the
components, the prototype or even the plans for the machine to communicate with
the dead. So far, they have found nothing, making Edison's device the greatest
mystery of his complex and intriguing life.
THE REAL STORY: PART 3
In the best hoaxes, fact and fiction are blended
using real dates and real people to create a convincing story. In the case of
the House on Ridge Avenue, the names of people like Julia Murray and Thomas
Edison have been used to make the story seem more real. As everyone knows,
Edison really did exist and he did express interest in creating a machine to
communicate with the dead. Whether he actually did or not remains open to
question.
Unfortunately, I can find no records of a spirit
medium named Julia Murray. I will not state definitively that she is a
fictional character but so far, I have seen nothing that says that she really
existed.
Edison, on the other hand, was very real but there
is absolutely no record to say that he ever set foot in the house on Ridge
Avenue. If he had, he would not have found an empty "haunted" house
but the home of Marie Congelier and her family would certainly have a memory of
a visit by the famous inventor. According to Mrs. Congelier's descendants, no
such visit ever took place.
THE LEGEND: PART 4
In the middle 1920's, Julia Murray's premonitions
of "evil" connected to the house on Ridge Avenue remained in the back
of many minds. During this period, the Equitable Gas Company, which was located
just a few blocks away, was nearing the completion of a huge natural gas
storage complex. To cut costs, many of the regular workers were laid off and
were replaced by Italian immigrants, who would work for a much lower wage. A
number of vacant buildings in the neighborhood were converted into apartments,
including the house at 1129 Ridge Avenue.
The Italian workers who took up residence in the
house quickly realized that something was not right in the old mansion. Their
complaints and reports were met with quick explanations from the supervisors at
the gas company. They told the immigrants that the strange occurrences were the
work of the American workers who had been replaced. The former employees were
playing tricks on the new workers, hoping they would abandon their jobs. The
men soon dismissed the strange sounds and ghostly footsteps as practical jokes
until an incident occurred a few months after they moved in.
One evening, fourteen men were seated around the
table in the common dining room. They had just finished consuming large
quantities of pasta and were now laughing and talking over glasses of homemade
wine. One of the men got up and carried a stack of dirty dishes into the
kitchen. He joked to his brother as he left the room, calling out a humorous
insult over his shoulder with a smile. The remark was answered with laughter
and his brother tossed a crust of bread at his sibling's retreating back. The
conversation continued for several minutes before the remaining man realized
that his brother had not returned from the kitchen. He got up and walked into
the other room to find the door to the basement standing open.
Suddenly, the festive mood in the dining room was
shattered by a chilling scream! Rushing into the kitchen, the men saw the
basement door as it yawned open. Taking a lantern from atop the icebox, several
of the men descended the steps into the cellar. Before they reached the bottom
of the steps, they froze, staring at the macabre scene that was illuminated by
the glow of the lantern. In the dim light, they saw the man who had left the
dining room just moments earlier, now hanging from a floor beam that crossed
the ceiling above.
On the floor, directly beneath his feet, was the
man's brother. He was lying face down in
a spreading pool of blood. A splintered board had been driven through his chest
and now exited out through his back.
The leader of the group on the steps crossed
himself religiously and a gasp escaped from his lips. His friends repeated the
gesture before all of them found themselves slammed backward by a force that
they could not see! The feeling of a cold wind pushed against them and then
rushed past up the stairs. The men later said that they could hear the pounding
of footsteps on the wooden treads, but could see nothing at all. The door at
the top of the stairs slammed shut, startling the men in the kitchen, who
didn't hear anything. However, they did report other doors mysteriously
slamming throughout the house.
When the police arrived, they attributed both
deaths to a bizarre accident. The first man, the detectives stated, tripped on
a loose step and fell down, impaling himself on the propped-up board. The other
brother's death was the result of the same loose stair step. When he fell,
though, his head was somehow tangled on an electric wire that was hanging down
above the staircase. Accident or not, the other men quickly moved out of the
house, wanting nothing more to do with the place.
THE REAL STORY: PART 4
Once again, real-life events blend into the story
to make it more compelling. In the 1920s, the nearby Equitable Gas Company did
lay off many of their workers and replaced them with Italian immigrants. As
many of the houses in the neighborhood were worker's homes anyway, several of
them were converted into housing for the replacement employees. However, there
were no records of any accidental deaths taking place at 1129 Ridge Avenue,
associated with these workers. One accident did take place however, on the same
day that another accident destroyed a gas storage tank nearby.
On the morning of the explosion, November 14, Marie
Congelier died from a laceration caused by a piece of glass. The glass had
severed her artery and she bled to death on the way to the hospital. She did
not die in the house but her death came about because of it -- with nothing
supernatural involved. She would become the only death that can truly be
connected to the House on Ridge Avenue.
THE LEGEND: PART 5
On Monday, November 14, 1927, a crew of sixteen
workers climbed to the top of the Equitable Gas Company's huge,
5,000,000-cubic-foot natural gas storage tank to find and repair a leak. At
8:43 that morning, a great sheet of flame erupted from the tank and the huge
container shot impossibly upwards into the air. Steel, stone and human bodies
were sent hurling into the sky. Two of the men who had been working on top of
the tank were thrown against a brick building more than one hundred feet away
and their silhouettes were outlined there in blood. Seconds later, another tank
exploded, creating another gigantic ball of fire. Then a third tank, this one
only partially full, was wrenched apart and added to the inferno. Smoke and
flames were visible for miles. The force was so awesome that it blew out
windows and shook buildings for a twenty-mile radius. Locomotives were knocked
over and homes and structures damaged as far away as East Liberty.
Across the street, the Union Paint Company was
flattened and dozens of workers were buried under the rubble of the building.
Bloody men, women and children ran frantically about in the streets.
The Battalion Chief of Engine Company No. 47, Dan
Jones, was part of the first fire unit to arrive on the scene. He described the
holocaust saying "great waves of black smoke swept through the streets and
there was a whining noise in the air." According to a book compiled by the
Writer's Project of America, the destruction stunned the city. "As houses
collapsed and chimneys toppled," they wrote, "brick, broken glass,
twisted pieces of steel and other debris rained on the heads of the dazed and
shaken residents who had rushed into the streets from their wrecked homes,
believing that an earthquake had visited the city."
Even the rescue workers and fire fighters who
arrived on the scene were injured and killed when weakened structures collapsed
on top of them. Entire neighborhoods were flooded by broken water mains while
huge sections of the city lay in ruins. Sections of the giant gas storage tanks
were later found more than a thousand feet away. Rough estimates from the
following day listed at least twenty-eight killed and more than six hundred
people injured from the explosion.
Rescue crews dynamited the ruins in a search for the bodies of the
dozens of others who were still missing. Thousands were left homeless by the
destruction.
Mounds of rubble and debris marked the spots where
buildings had once stood. At one place though, not even bricks and stone
remained. At 1129 Ridge Avenue, just two blocks away from the blast site, there
was nothing but a smoldering crater. Although homes on both sides, and across
the street, from where the Congelier mansion had stood were heavily damaged,
they were still standing. Yet where the "most haunted house in America'
had stood, and where Julia Murray's proclaimed "evil presence" had
lingered, there was nothing. A hole that nearly eighty-five feet deep was all
that remained. It was the only house in the vicinity of which no trace could be
found.
Today, the Carnegie Science Center occupies the
site of the Equitable Gas Company tanks and the terrible explosion is only a
faint memory from the past. The house on Ridge Avenue is all but forgotten. Its
location is the present-day site of the Route 65 and Interstate 279
interchange. Nothing from the days of Dr. Brunrichter, the Congelier's, or the
luckless Italian immigrants still lingers, or does it? If it is possible for
the spirits of the past to still wander restlessly along a busy highway, then
it would be at this place where such spirits would dwell -- the place where one
of the most evil houses in the country could be found.
THE REAL STORY: PART 5
Spooky ending, huh?
Unfortunately, it's not accurate either. The gas
storage tank at the Equitable Gas Company did explode on November 14, 1927 and
killed twenty-four people in the surrounding area. The concussion and
subsequent fire did wreak havoc in this part of the city and it destroyed many
houses and buildings, leaving hundreds of people homeless. The details of the
destruction that are recounted in the legend of the house are true and accurate
- for the most part.
Where things veer off course is in regards to the
house at 1129 Ridge Avenue. In every version of the story, the house is
destroyed by the blast, leaving only an ominous crater behind - as if it was
sucked down into the very pit of hell. While this makes a fitting ending to the
dramatic tale of America's "original most haunted house," it's not
the away that it happened in real life. In truth, the house only suffered minor
damage from the explosion. A number of windows were broken but that was about
all. According to a family member, Robert Frederick Congelier, the house stood
for several years after the disaster and was only torn down to make way for the
freeway and the redevelopment of the area.
There is an old saying that goes that "truth
is stranger than fiction" and in many ways, I would say that this is the
case. However, not with every story. In the tale of the House on Ridge Avenue,
fiction was really much stranger than fact ever could be and truth proved to be
the undoing of the haunting of "America's original most haunted
house."
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