Creepy history – Alan E. Hunter

Creepy history, Pop Culture, Weekly Column

Mailing May. Parts I & II.

November 9, 2026 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original publish date February 20, 2014.

https://weeklyview.net/2014/02/20/mailing-may-part-1

A friend of mine from Chicago, Wally Dworak, recently gave me an excellent idea for a story. I’m not going to give away the punchline, but the gist of the idea revolves around the United States Postal Service and the history of Parcel Post. Wait, wait, before you roll your eyes and put down the paper, it gets better, I promise.

The term “Parcel Post” refers to the sending of oversized packages through the mail service. Parcel Post was developed to handle mail that was too heavy for normal letter carriers to deliver. It was usually slower than letter post and was most often associated with rural communities. It’s usefulness coincided with the development of a national railway network which enabled parcels to be carried in bulk on a regular schedule and at economical prices.
Although foreign parcel services started in 1887 and the United States was a signatory for foreign parcel delivery, domestic Parcel Post service was not instituted until 1913. Parcel Post became available to Americans on January 1, 1913 as a way to encourage economical delivery in rural America. It was an immediate smash hit.

Mrs. William Sulzer receiving the first Parcel Post Package Delivery from New York to Albany, 1913. Clara was the wife of New York Congressman & Governor William Sulzer, who served one year (1913) before being impeached and removed from office.

Farm families, who were largely poor, were excited about the new service because it meant they would be able to ship and receive eggs, live chicks, seeds, tobacco and food inexpensively and reliably. Soon urban dwellers began ordering through the mail more regularly, turning small mail-order companies like Montgomery Wards, L.L. Bean, J.C. Penney and Sears into icons of American industry overnight. Suddenly everyone from haircare product companies and seed companies to home appliance and automobile companies were shipping something care of the U.S. Postal Service and Parcel Post.
During the first five days of service, 1,594 post offices reported handling over 4 million Parcel Post packages. The effect on the national economy was electric. Not only did Parcel Post give rise to great mail-order businesses, it also created an immediate demand for special packaging suitable for mailing the wide array of goods deliverable under the new system. Montgomery Ward, the first mail-order house, started in 1872 with a one-page catalog. Parcel Post quickly made the mail-order catalog one of the most important books in the farmhouse, or in most cases, the outhouse. The mail order catalog quickly became “The Homesteaders Bible” or the “Wish Book.”

The Sears, Roebuck & Company Parcel Post Mailroom.

Sears, Roebuck and Company followed Montgomery Ward in 1893. By 1897, co-founder Richard Sears boasted he was selling four suits and a watch every minute, a revolver every two minutes and a buggy every ten minutes. And within five years, Sears-Roebuck had tripled its revenues.
By 1918, a large fleet of trucks were delivering Parcel Post shipments, enabling farmers to ship eggs and other produce directly to the customer. Eggs quickly became a mainstay of Parcel Post. In fact, six eggs were the first objects sent by Parcel Post from St. Louis, Missouri to Edwardsville, Illinois. The eggs were mailed at 12:05 a.m. and returned to St. Louis seven hours later baked in a cake.

**Comic Parcel Post postcard of the Era.**

A staggering variety of goods have been mailed by Parcel Post through the years including small animals that did not require food or water while in transit. Ironically, baby chicks began to rival eggs as the most oft-shipped item via Parcel Post. Baby chicks, shipped in specially constructed boxes, were roundly disliked by carriers because of their noise, smell and tendency to die en route. In the 1920s, a rural community like New Washington, Ohio (home to over 15 hatcheries) might ship as many as 80,000 chicks through the local Post Office every day.

It wasn’t long before local reporters in search of a good story began to note violations of the Parcel Post system either by those who didn’t understand the rules, or by those who simply didn’t care. Although tame by today’s standards, Roaring Twenties newsmen were aghast at parcels consisting of a live lobster mailed from the New York City post office to an elite upscale Philadelphian for dinner that night, a brindle bulldog delivered to a Yonkers (New York) resident, and a coffin delivered to Zanesville, Ohio. Unimpressed? Well, consider that these items were all sent in their natural form, sans packaging, adorned only with postage stamps.

Special stamps were printed for Parcel Post service to help in the effort of keeping accounts and revenues generated from general postage and the Parcel Post separate. The twelve Parcel Post stamps had three basic design themes that were associated with the Post Office and its delivery service. The denominations were such that any amount of postage up to one dollar could be made by using no more than three stamps. Three of the Parcel Post denominations—20 cents, 25 cents and 75 cents—were new to U. S. Postage. (Source: Wikipedia)

In 1917, Postmaster General Albert Burleson ordered the imposition of a maximum daily limit of 200 pounds per customer per day. His order came after William H. Coltharp used the service to ship more than 80,000 masonry bricks over 400 miles via horse-drawn wagon and train for use in the construction of a new bank building. It was the largest thing ever to be sent through the mail via Parcel Post. Burleson famously said, “It is not the intent of the U.S. Postal Service that buildings be shipped through the mail.”

In conjunction with Parcel Post stamps, Congress approved an act on August 24, 1912, for postage due stamps which were issued at the same time the Parcel Post stamps were issued, to be used when inadequate postage was affixed to a parcel. Postage-due stamps were affixed by the postmaster and the amount was supposed to be paid by the addressee. (Source: Wikipedia)

Coltharp, an enterprising young businessman, came up with the idea to construct his new bank in Vernal, Utah in 1916. He wanted the best bricks in the area and those bricks were made by the Salt Lake Pressed Brick Company. The problem was that the brick Company was located about 120 miles away from Vernal, Utah as the crow flies, and even longer on the winding roads that wove through Utah. Coltharp realized that the freight costs to haul the bricks from Salt Lake City to Vernal were about four times more expensive than the cost of the bricks themselves. In what surely must have been a stroke of creative genius, Coltharp decided he would have the bricks mailed to the small town, taking advantage of the cheap Parcel Post rates.

**Typical Pre-World War I U.S. Post Office Parcel Post Window.**

He carefully packaged the bricks in separate crates weighing less than the 50-pound weight limit. He shipped an average of 40 crates each day weighing roughly one ton collectively daily. The trek from the Salt Lake City post office to Vernal took a very circuitous route to say the least. First, the bricks were sent via the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad to Mack, Colorado. From there, they went to Watson, Colorado by way of a narrow gauge railroad. Finally the bricks were hauled the final 65 miles to Vernal by freight wagon. The total length of this route was over 400 miles. Ultimately all of the bricks were delivered, prompting the U.S. Post Office to change their regulations. The Bank of Vernal was completed and was nicknamed “The Parcel Post Bank” by some of the town’s residents. The building, located on West Main Street and occupied by Zions Bank, is still standing and a registered county landmark.

**W. Reginald Bray became so popular that he made it on to his own trading card, this one is autographed.**

Among the items considered unmailable in the new service were intoxicants, poisons, poisonous animals, insects, reptiles, flammable materials, pistols, revolvers, live (or dead) animals, live birds or poultry, raw hides or “any article with a bad odor.” But then there was the peculiar hobby of W. Reginald Bray, who liked to send things through the mail that were not specifically prohibited, but created a challenge for the postal service nonetheless. At one point or another, Bray mailed a bowler hat, a rabbit skull (the address spelled out on the nasal bone, and the stamps pasted to the back), a purse, a slipper, a clothes brush, seaweed, shirt collars, a penny, a turnip (address and message carved into the durable tuber), an Irish Terrier, and a pipe, among other curios. Bray successfully sent himself through the mail twice, in 1900 and again in 1903, the second time by registered mail. He was not packed in a box, but was delivered by postal carriers who walked beside him.

Still other unusual mailings can’t help but stir the patriot in all of us. Such as the “parceling” of Henry “Box” Brown, a slave in Antebellum Era Virginia. Brown collaborated with two white men to have himself mailed to an abolitionist in Philadelphia. Brown spent 26 hours in a wooden crate, most of it upside down! When he emerged from the crate in Philadelphia a free man, Brown said, “How do you do, gentlemen?” Afterward, he traveled and lectured for the anti-slavery movement and later became a performing magician. The middle name “Box” was added after his shipment to freedom.

But for me, and obviously my friend Wally from Chicago, the most fascinating aspect of parcel post is the little known fact that, prior to World War I, some parents sent their children Parcel Post. The most famous example of this happening 100 years ago this week.

**A US postman carrying a small boy in his postbag, USA, circa 1910. (Photo by Vintage Images/Getty Images)**

PART II

**The only known photograph of Charlotte May Pierstorff (1908-1987)**

https://weeklyview.net/2014/02/27/mailing-may-part-2

Original publish date February 27, 2014.

Some stories just seem to have their own serendipitous rhythm. This is one of those stories. Last week I told you about the development of the United States Parcel Post service and how it changed the face of rural America and created mail order empires along the way. In between writing parts one and two, my wife Rhonda illustrated the value of Parcel Post in my own life. Seems that my son Addison went back down to Indiana University after Christmas break without taking a coat along. The temperatures went sub zero and of course, the idea occurred to him that he might need a coat. So I prepared myself for the 1 1/2 hour drive (one way) to deliver said coat.

Just then, my wife said, “No problem, I’ll just mail it to him.” What? Mail a coat? She proceeded to explain to me that it would cost $4.95, far less than the gas required to drive it down to him. (About five times less to be exact.) Not only did she send the coat, she stuffed the box with other goodies, too. Thank goodness for the United States Post Office. For context, I must confess that this same child once made it all the way to South Georgia before he informed us that he had forgotten his shoes. Yes, it’s never easy traveling with children and often it can be challenging and expensive.

Which brings us back to the point of our story. As we discovered in Part 1 of this tale, with the advent of Parcel Post before World War I, people began to send some very strange things through the U.S. mail. But none stranger than the parcel that was sent on February 19, 1914, 100 years ago this month.

For that was the day a 48 1/2 pound package (just shy of the 50 pound limit) walked into the Grangeville Idaho post office to be mailed 75 miles away to Lewiston, Idaho. The name of this most precious package was Charlotte May Pierstorff, but everyone called her “May.” She was a blonde haired, blue-eyed little darling just three months shy of six years old. Her parents, John Elmer Peirstorff and Sarah Charlotte Vennigerholz, had attached 53-cents in Parcel Post stamps to May’s coat. This little girl traveled the entire distance to Lewiston in the train’s mail compartment and was delivered to her grandmother’s home by the mail clerk on duty, Leonard Mochel.

Born in Westlake, Idaho, U.S. on 12 May 1908, May was on her way across state to see her grandparents. Seems that mailing May was cheaper than buying her a train ticket. Her parents did not want to pay the exorbitant train fare, which amounted to an entire day’s pay. Instead, they chose to take advantage of the new Parcel Post system created just the year before. They first checked postal regulations to make sure that there were no laws against mailing a human, then delivered their precious little package to the astonished postal clerk. The Pierstorff’s bought 53 cents worth of stamps and the postal clerk attached them to May’s coat, labeling the shipment as a “baby chick.”

A short time later conductor Harry Morris stumbled upon the little girl sitting quietly atop a pile of mail bags. Morris inspected the tag (and no doubt tallied the postage) tied to May’s coat, and since the mother was nowhere to be seen, allowed the girl to ride in the mail car to Lewiston. May rode in the train’s mail compartment under the watchful eye of the baffled postal carrier Leonard Mochel. Some accounts claim that May was “chaperoned” on her journey by a relative who worked on the Railway Mail Train. Later a city letter carrier posed for a humorous photograph with a young boy in his mailbag in response to the unusual event. The National Postal Museum still has this humorous picture on display to note those more turbulent times in USPS history.

Charlotte May Pierstorff lived an unassuming, normal life, marrying twice. Her first marriage was to Mark Chaffins and her second was to Kay William Sipes, with whom she had two children. She passed away at age 79 on April 25, 1987 in Santa Cruz, California. It wasn’t until a decade after May’s death that she was finally recognized for having been mailed. In 1997, author Michael O. Tunnell wrote a popular children’s book, Mailing May, that told the story of May’s childhood and her postal adventure.

Amazingly enough, May wasn’t the first child “mailed” in the U.S. She was just the most famous. That honor belongs to a tiny 10 ¾ pound unnamed baby boy who lived near Cincinnati, Ohio. In mid January 1913, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Beauge of Glen Este, Ohio was carried by Rural Free Delivery carrier Vernon Little to his grandmother, Mrs. Louis Beague about a mile away. The boy’s parents paid 15 cents for the stamps and even insured their son for $50.

Two weeks later, on January 27, Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Savis of Pine Hollow, Pennsylvania entrusted their daughter to rural carrier James Byerly out of Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, who delivered her safely that afternoon to relatives in Clay Hollow. The daughter cost her parents 45 cents to send.

Although 1913 started out with a bang for mailing children, the rest of the year passed pretty quietly. May’s travels in early 1914 changed all that. After May’s incident, postal employees demanded the public not mail children. But the wheels of the post office move slowly, and despite Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson’s directive that all human beings were barred from the mails, the practice continued. Barely a month after the “no-humans” announcement, rural carrier B.H. Knepper in Maryland carried a 14 pound baby from its grandmother’s home in Clear Spring to the mother’s house in Indian Springs, 12 miles away. A local newspaper reported that the baby slept through the entire trip.

Closer to home that same year, postal workers in Stillwell, Indiana accepted a parcel post box marked “live infant.” They delivered the box to South Bend, 30 miles away, where the baby’s divorced father received and opened it. Postage on the box was 17 cents.

The next year, a Florida state worker mailed six-year-old Edna Neff from Pensacola to Christiansburg, Virginia — an astonishing journey of 730 miles! The girl’s parents were separated and the mother had fallen on hard times. The mother had given the child up to foster care. A Pensacola probation officer had temporary custody of little Edna, but couldn’t afford the train fare for her and an accompanying adult. So she mailed Edna to the girl’s father. There is little information on the specifics of Edna’s trip, which was made by railway mail train, other than her weight, recorded as just under the 50-pound limit resulting in a trip cost 15 cents in Parcel Post stamps.

The year 1915 would turn out to be a banner year for mailing children as two more trips were made after Edna’s that year. In March rural carrier Charles Hayes of Tarkin, Missouri carried Mr. and Mrs. Albert Combs’ daughter Helen by Parcel Post for 10 cents. Hayes delivered Helen to her grandmother, Mrs. C.H. Combs, whose home was also on his route. That September, three-year-old Maud Smith made her Parcel Post journey when she traveled from her grandparents’ home to her mother’s, Mrs. Celina Smith of Jackson, Kentucky. By now, the public was growing increasingly unsettled by this mailing of children, since the percentage of child molesters amongst the population in 1915 was about the same as it is today.

The negative publicity probably prevented another child mailing until 1919, when it appears a press agent for the Aluminum Company of America arranged for the mailing of five-year-old Marmi Hood and four-year-old Evan Hedge to their respective fathers, who were locked down inside in the company’s plant in Alco, Tennessee, surrounded by union picket lines. After a two hour tearful visit, heavily documented by the company publicity department, the children were “mailed Special Delivery” back to the Alco, Tennessee Post Office, where their mothers were anxiously waiting for them. Postage for the stunt both ways was $2.26. Negative publicity about this particular event appears to have hastened the practice and this became the final case of “child mail.” Well, the final case of mailing a live child anyway.

The USPS officially announced on June 13, 1920, that it would no longer accept children as Parcel Post and violation of the new regulation could carry a stiff jail sentence. On November 22, 1922 a dark-headed teenage girl brought a package to the Albany, New York Post Office to be mailed. The destination was nearby and the postal clerk asked her. “Why don’t you just walk it there yourself?” The mystery girl answered that she was “in a hurry” and that the box contained “just some laundry.” The C.O.D. (cash on delivery) package was delivered just blocks away to undertaker A. B. Kiernan.

Upon opening the package, Mr. Kiernan and his wife found a dead newborn and a $5 bill. It was a girl, approximately three days old. An autopsy showed the child had been born healthy but was smothered to death, probably by a pillow. The unknown and undoubtedly desperate parents had sent her in hopes that she would get a decent burial. The Albany Times Union reported on November 23, 1922 that “The tenderest treatment is being afforded this tiny atom of humanity. Its little body reposes in a tiny white casket especially made by Mr. Kiernan and the wee form is clothed in immaculate white, which Mrs. Kiernan made with her own hands for this forsaken and cruelly murdered baby.”

Given the baby’s unknown identity, City Coroner John Mullen named her “Parcella Post,” for the way the baby had been delivered to the funeral home. No identity was ever found for the little girl. Her headstone in Graceland Cemetery, paid for by the citizens of Albany, reads “Parcella Post Infant.”

In 1965 a car drove into the Graceland cemetery and asked where her stone was. They left flowers on the gravesite, but no one thought to question the occupants in the car until after they were gone. Today, people adorn her gravesite with toys, flowers and notes. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her story has become one of the region’s most oft-told, celebrated ghost stories. Funny how things come full circle isn’t it? That’s why the column is called “Bumps in the Night,” folks.

**1910s Parcel Post zone map of the USA.**

Despite the macabre nature that hastened the end of the Parcel Post “Mailing May” Era, during the decades between the World Wars, America had fun with the novelty of the system. Items produced and sold from that time period (and up to the modern day) included everything from postcards to Valentine Day cards to banks and collectible replica cars, several of which are pictured below.

The vehicles used by Parcel Post Mail Carriers are irresistible to historians.

Creepy history, Criminals, Ghosts, Irvington Ghost Tours

Pat Quinlan and the Ghost of H.H. Holmes, Parts I & II

November 5, 2026 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

Original publish date October 22, 2015 Republished October 8, 2026

https://weeklyview.net/2015/10/22/pat-quinlan-and-the-ghost-of-h-h-holmes-part-1

As a lover of all things historical, the stories I find myself most drawn to often include the aftermath of a historical event. One such story involves an incident and personality from the pages of Irvington history. In October of 1894, America’s first serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes committed one of his last murders in a quiet little bungalow on what was then the far eastern edge of Irvington. He was captured, imprisoned, convicted and hung in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1896. While that was the end of HIS story, it was not the end of THE story.

H.H. Holmes left behind a massive building at 63rd and Wallace in Chicago that the press dubbed “The Murder Castle.” Here Holmes tortured and killed his victims as systematically as cattle in a stockyard. Some claim that Holmes killed over 200 people; he confessed to killing 27. The 3-story building was a maze of confusing hallways with blind corners, doors that opened to brick walls and rooms that were escape proof with the only exit for guests being a greased chute leading to the basement.

**Chicago Sunday Tribune March 21, 1957.**

The building was described in a contemporary newspaper article as: “The castle was built admirably for a murder shop. A dumb waiter ran from the third floor to the basement and there were no connections with the dumb waiter on the intervening floors. The conveyance was big enough to admit a man riding upon it. On the top floor in one of the rooms was a gigantic stove. It was eight feet high and three feet in diameter. It was an ideal stove for the burning of a human body. A person could be thrown into the stove bodily and could be burned to nothing. In the basement were quicklime vats. Bodies could be thrown in quicklime and consumed.”

Here, from left-to-right, in one of our early poses, we have, (aAheMm) “1 Handsome Devil” HW Mudgett (myself, seated), with my young, multi-tasking “Devil in the Details” business partner -&- Architectural Supervisor, Patrick Quinlan, (himself, leaning). Seen here, we Pose Together, at a Mooers Forks, New York, Photography Studio, around 1886. This estimated time & place is “give-or-take” at best, and is only “as memory serves!” After all.. those were Heady Days!
*Tintype Credit: “Brownie’s Long Lost Images” c.Blue Brown (2018).

Patrick Quinlan was the caretaker of that Murder Castle. Police described Quinlan as being “five feet, eight or nine inches tall, slim build with light curly hair, sandy mustache around 38-years-old” at the time. “Pat” Quinlan had done a pretty good job portraying his innocence in the dirty deeds that went on at the Murder Castle. He said that he was only an employee of arch murderer H. H. Holmes. He claimed that he was just the janitor of the Holmes Murder Castle, 701 63rd Street, Chicago, and nothing more. He admitted he had helped build the secret trap doors and lined the killing rooms with asbestos, designed to deaden the sound of dying men and women, but Quinlan insisted that he knew nothing of their purpose, and had no part in the devilish machinations of his boss.

Quinlan was only an ordinary employee who did what he was told unhesitatingly. Quinlan never questioned the authority of his boss, H.H. Holmes. He never asked who the many women were Holmes had visiting him. He never questioned why he would see them come in but never see them go out. He never asked where they went when they disappeared. He was an ideal servant. That was the face Pat Quinlan showed to the authorities and the role he played for the public, but the truth was vastly different. Pat Quinlan was playing games of his own in the Murder Castle.

**1893 Chicago Worlds Fair Expo Poster.**

Seems that the married Quinlan liked the ladies as much as his boss did and apparently held them in the same regard. In 1893, he got a chambermaid that worked at the Castle, named Lizzie, pregnant. His wife lived in Ohio, but would soon be joining her husband at the Castle in time to see the 1893 World’s Fair located a short six blocks away. As the time for his wife’s arrival drew ever nearer, heated arguments between Pat and his very pregnant mistress made Holmes aware of the problem. Quinlan asked his boss, Dr. Holmes, if he could deliver the baby and “keep it quiet so the missus don’t find out.” Quinlan’s agitation grew as Holmes paused for a long uncomfortable minute before answering, “I’ll do anything I can Pat.”

The plan to deliver the baby changed days after his revelation to Dr. Holmes. Now Lizzie threatened to tell Pat’s wife of their elicit love affair. Worse, Lizzie had already told her sister. Quinlan went to Holmes and explained the situation in an undisguised effort to take advantage of his boss’s nefarious skills he would later claim he had no knowledge of. Quinlan lured both women to a small room in a remote part of the Murder Castle. He left the two women and met Holmes in the basement where the doctor turned on the open gas jets, filling the room with the deadly invisible killing atmosphere. Within a few minutes the two sisters were dead.

Their bodies were disposed of in the usual manner and without a trace. Quinlan’s problem was instantly solved and his silent loyalty guaranteed forever. Since Quinlan did an admirable job of keeping his mouth shut while proclaiming his innocence, no one will ever know what part he played in the murders at the Castle. What we do know is that Quinlan likely remained quiet for no other reason than fear of Dr. H.H. Holmes. One of the requirements of employment with Holmes was a life insurance policy for $5,000 naming Holmes as beneficiary. Quinlan also knew that the caretaker before him was a man named Robert Latimer who tried to blackmail Holmes after learning of the insurance scams. Pat’s fellow employees told him that Latimer just disappeared one day.

**An artist’s rendering of the H.H. Holmes trial, which appeared on the front page of the Oct. 30, 1895 edition of The Philadelphia Times, a publication that was later absorbed by the Inquirer.**

On trial in Philadelphia, Holmes said this of Latimer, his 13th victim: “Robert Latimer, a man who had for some years been in my employ as janitor, was my next victim. Several years previous, before I had ever taken human life, he had known of certain insurance work I had engaged in, and when, in after years, he sought to extort money from me, his own death and the sale of his body was the recompense meted out to him. I confined him within the Secret Room and slowly staved him to death. Of this room and its secret gas supply and muffled windows and doors, sufficient has already been printed. Finally, needing its use for another purpose and because his pleadings had become almost unbearable, I ended his life. The partial excavation in the walls of this room found by the police was caused by Latimer’s endeavoring to escape by tearing away the solid brick and mortar with his unaided fingers.”
In September of 1893, one month before the close of the all-important 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the Murder Castle caught fire in several different locations simultaneously. True to form, Holmes had insured the building with several companies for a total of $25,000 (which shakes out to $657,000 in today’s money). Investigators discovered strong evidence of a liquid accelerant used to start the blaze. The fire had not spread to the lower floors and the insurance company never paid Holmes’s claim. The fire destroyed the top floor but Holmes was never charged with arson. The fire was the beginning of the end for H.H. Holmes.

**Herman Webster Mudgett aka H.H. Holmes.**

Pat Quinlan and the Ghost of H.H. Holmes, Part II

Original publish date October 29, 2015 Republished October 15, 2026

https://weeklyview.net/2026/10/15/pat-quinlan-and-the-ghost-of-h-h-holmes-part-2-2

H.H. Holmes paid for his misdeeds with death by hanging on May 7, 1896. But his former “Murder Castle” caretaker/janitor Patrick “Pat” Quinlan would never escape his own self-made prison. When the Murder Castle caught fire in September of 1893, he was arrested with Holmes but eventually freed. Quinlan was accused of starting the fire (and most likely did) but it was his actions after the fire that tipped off Chicago Police that there may have been something more going on in that building than a botched attempted arson.

**Contemporary newspaper article revealing the layout of the Holmes’ Murder Castle.**

During the fire, many bones were found around Holmes Castle. Holmes explained they were beef bones left over from a time when the flat had been used as a restaurant during the World’s Fair at Chicago. He explained that the huge dumb waiter was used to convey those many pounds of beef. He explained that the asbestos was to make the house fireproof and for insulation. For the moment, Holmes had wriggled off the hook by the use of those crafty lies. He would soon leave town with the ill-fated Pitezel children in tow and would kill 10-year-old Howard Pitezel in Irvington a short time later.

**1890s Paperweight image of the Adolph Luetgert Sausage Works Factory.**

After the fire, caretaker Quinlan took several cartloads of garbage out of the “factory.” The cops searched the dumpster a week later, they were now mostly empty but with traces of obvious human ashes and bone fragments inside. In 1893, forensic science was still a few years away and the discovery of a blood soaked rag in the basement of the castle could set off a plausible legal argument over whether it was blood or paint and a piece of bone was hard to differentiate between human or animal. Ironically, the first use of bone fragments as evidence would happen a few years later in 1897 just blocks from the Murder Castle. Adolph Louis Luetgert (namesake of the A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company) was charged with murdering his wife and dissolving her body in lye in one of his factory’s sausage vats in 1897. A bit of jaw bone found in the factory (which was thriving at the same time as the Murder Castle) was identified as the remains of Adolph’s wife, Louisa.

Quinlan continued to live in one of the thirty-five bedrooms on the second floor, and the street-level retail shops remained open for business. A whisper campaign proliferated in the area after the World’s Fair left town. The local economy was hurting and now people were suspicious of Dr. Holmes and his questionable predatory business tactics and neighborhood scams. Chicago police were hesitant to investigate the Castle prior to July 1895 for fear of injuring the local construction trade, as Dr. Holmes had been almost continuously adding onto his hotel up until that time.

**The Murder Castle long after H.H. Holmes departure.**

But the reputation of the place as the local haunted house was drawing negative attention by the Chicago press. Many reporters and gawkers broke into the Castle, wandering its maze-like corridors, staring at its grotesqueries, stealing Holmes’ abandoned belongings, and generally destroying it as a crime scene. The vandals drove Pat Quinlan out of the Murder Castle for good. On August 2, 1895, after Holmes was secured away in Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison, Patrick Quinlan (and ironically his wife) turned state’s evidence and testified against his former boss. Quinlan, now comfortable in the knowledge that his tormentor H.H. Holmes was safely behind bars, described his former boss to police detectives as a “dirty, lying scoundrel” who should be hung for his crimes and that “he (Quinlan) would only be too willing to spring the trap.”

**Philadelphia County Prison, Moyamensing**.

Quinlan gave testimony at Holmes’ trial that he was aware of the practice of stealing bodies from Western Michigan graveyards under the direction of Holmes. These bodies were then sold to local college and university medical schools, no questions asked. Quinlan’s wife testified to this too. Both claimed they were aware of the practice but did not participate in the actual grave robberies. It was reported Quinlan and another man only received the bodies and participated in the “remaking and lining” of coffins for corpses before sale for medical use.

The fire didn’t actually level the building (as most books say) but it did destroy a lot of evidence. Pat, along with his wife, continued to live in the burned out shell of the old Murder Castle while Holmes was on trial. Soon, the negative attention and gangs of marauding vandals roaming through the creepy old building at all hours of the day and night drove the Quinlan’s from the building. When the Quinlan’s went back to his home state of Michigan, Pat found himself the center of suspecting eyes and backhanded whispers. Everywhere he went, he was stared at and treated as fodder for gossip. While the rest of the world forgot Holmes, the little town where Pat lived continued to speculate about how much he really knew.

His closest friends said that Pat Quinlan often reproached himself for his part in the dastardly affair. He told friends and family that he blamed himself for not suspecting Holmes and turning him in to the police. He was clearly dealing with demons all his own many years after his evil ex-employer was dead and buried 10 feet deep under six tons of concrete (to discourage grave robbers). For nineteen years Quinlan could not sleep. At night he would wake up screaming and covered with sweat. He experienced night terrors almost every night. He would call for help and when a light would be brought to his room or when the electric switch would be turned on he would recount how he was “attacked while half asleep by strange hallucinations”.

For nineteen years this man had been unable to sleep peacefully because of the awful experiences he endured during his employment by Holmes and during the period immediately after. While he remained in Chicago, Quinlan claimed that the Castle was haunted by Holmes’ many victims. He told friends that his former employer would visit him in his sleep, that the victims roamed the halls and pecked on the windows of the Castle. That the spirits followed him even after he moved back to a farmhouse in his Portland, Michigan hometown. By the spring of 1914, Pat Quinlan was a broken man. On March 7, 1914 Patrick Quinlan, the former caretaker of the murder castle, picked up a slip of paper and scribbled a note reading, “I could not sleep.” He then quietly committed suicide by drinking from a bottle of pesticide whose active ingredient was deadly strychnine. Pat’s facial muscles stretched tight and a peculiar metallic taste flooded his mouth. His calf muscles began to stiffen and convulse, his toes curled up under his feet and as his head thrashed back-and-forth, blinding flashes of light darted across his eyes. His body went ice cold as he finally drifted off into that final sleep. Witnesses claimed that in death, he looked as though he had been carried there by the ghosts of the slain women of the Castle he helped to build. Pat Quinlan had killed himself and his death did not cause much of a stir. His name would be forgotten.

**United States Post Office on former site of Holmes’ Murder Castle.**

And what became of the Murder Castle, the building that had seen so much misery and pain? It stood for another twenty years on the corner of 63rd and Wallace on the southside of Chicago, a city section known as Inglewood. Of course it was known as the most haunted building in the area while it stood. The retail shops remained relatively unchanged and open on the ground floor but the two upper floors were changed radically. The building remained until the U.S. government purchased it in 1937. A United States post office was built on the site in 1938 and since then it has been the scene of poltergeist activity in the basement tunnels where the Murder Castle killing zone once stood. Chicago paranormal adventurers have heard the sounds of moans and crying coming from the site and a ghost chaser friend of mine claims to have seen one actual, full-body apparition there. No trace of the Murder Castle remains and the hauntings there may be the only evidence the of the murders that were left behind.

Creepy history, Hollywood, Pop Culture, Television

The “Family Affair” Curse. Parts I & II.

November 5, 2026 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

The Family Affair cast 1966. New York City bachelor Bill Davis (Brian Keith-center), whose comfortable life was upended when he became guardian to his late brother’s three children: teenage Cissy (Kathy Garver-left) and young twins Buffy (Anissa Jones-left centers) and Jody (Johnny Whitaker-lower right). With the help of his devoted English butler, Mr. French (Sebastian Cabot-right).

Original publish date August 28, 2014. Republished on September 10, 2026.

https://weeklyview.net/2026/09/10/the-family-affair-curse-part-1-2

My wife and I visited an antique mall the other day. When we entered, I noticed a strange doll behind a glass case. I usually don’t pay attention to dolls, but this one looked familiar. It was about two feet tall and wore a blue-and-white polka-dot dress with yellow fringe. Her short blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and square glasses made her easy to recognize. I asked my wife, Rhonda, why the doll looked familiar, and she replied, “Oh, that’s Mrs. Beasley from Family Affair.”

Family Affair? I remember that TV show. Most of all, I remember the owner of that little doll; Anissa Jones. But before I get ahead of myself, for those of you who need a refresher course. Family Affair told the story of a handsome New York City bachelor who becomes the guardian of his nieces and nephew when their parents suddenly die in a car accident. William Davis (a.k.a. “Uncle Bill” played by Brian Keith) is the head of an engineering firm who finds that he has to put his playboy lifestyle on hold to raise these kids. At first he believes it will only be a temporary position, but by the end of the first episode he comes to adore the children and enlists his butler Mr. French (Sebastian Cabot) as their co-protector. The show ran for five seasons from 1966 to 1971 and was in the top five rated programs on TV for three of those seasons.

Maybe you’re visualizing that doll, Mrs. Beasley. Maybe the theme song is weaving a path through your head like an ear worm …”da da da dun dada da dun dun, da da da dun dada da dun dun.” Or maybe, like me, you remember Buffy — Anissa Jones. Did you know she was from Indiana? Ironically, on the show, the three kids were born and raised in Terre Haute when they moved to Manhattan to live with their Uncle Bill.

Mary Anissa Jones was born in West Lafayette, Indiana to Purdue faculty member Dr. John Paul Jones and his wife Mary “Paula” Tweel on March 11, 1958. Paula was of Lebanese descent and the child’s middle name (pronounced Ah-NEE-Sah) meant “little friend” in Arabic. A little over a year later, a baby brother, Paul, arrived. (More about him later).

**A rare signed photo of Hoosier child star Anissa Jones (1958-1976)**

The family moved to Playa del Rey, California while the children were still toddlers but the parents soon divorced in 1965. The divorce undoubtedly affected Anissa adversely and contributed to her precociousness. The most immediate change in behavior was that Anissa and her baby brother Paul became inseparable.

Anissa’ s mom was a school teacher; her dad, a well paid engineer for Hughes Aircraft. But Anissa’s dad has been described as a deadbeat who abandoned his family. Dr. Jones was court ordered to pay $80 per child per month in support. He eventually fell over $10,000.00 behind in child support. This delinquency caused the family car to be repossessed and the family home to go into foreclosure. Despite these terrible family setbacks, Anissa’s career was just starting to take off.

Paula enrolled Anissa in dance class at the tender age of four. Her troupe was asked to perform on The Art Linkletter Show, and 7-year-old Anissa was singled out to do a cartwheel. She failed the first time, landing on her rear end instead, and the audience roared with laughter. Anissa picked herself up and tried it again, this time she nailed it. Although the audience loved it, Anissa was mortified by her initial failure and cried all the way home. An agent was in the audience that night and he immediately contacted her mother to sign Anissa to a contract. Soon, Jones began landing jobs in television commercials, appearing in close to two dozen commercials before the age of eight. Television producer Don Fedderson was putting together the cast for a new series called Family Affair.

The show needed a 15-year-old girl (Cissy), an 6-year-old boy (Jodie) and another 6-year-old girl (Buffy). Although 8 years of age, Anissa auditioned for and won the part of Elizabeth “Buffy” Patterson-Davis thanks to her youthful look, charming personality and above-average acting talent. Series star Brian Keith suggested Fedderson consider a little boy he’d recently worked on in the film The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming who had the ability to cry on cue. Redheaded 6-year-old Johnnie Whitaker’s casting as Jodie required a shift in the concept. He and Jones were written as fraternal twins, with Cathy Garver cast as their 15-year-old sister. (Garver was nearly 21 at the time!)

In another case of life imitating art, Anissa’s parents bitter divorce caused upheaval in her home life which transferred well to her orphan TV character being shuttled here and there under traumatic circumstances. Anissa didn’t have to stretch to obtain the forlorn, dejected qualities that Buffy initially displayed on the show. The first couple of episodes of Family Affair highlighted the adjustments to this newly formed unconventional family unit and the misunderstandings that were sure to arise when a confirmed bachelor takes on three youngsters. This theme, perhaps commonplace by today’s standards, was considered edgy and controversial for the 1960s.

Eventually, the TV quintet solidified into a warm family unit dealing with the regular sort of issues befalling any family. Rotund Sebastian Cabot portrayed the fastidious, efficient British butler whose household and lifestyle are upended as much as his employer’s by the arrival of the children. His exasperation eventually melted into affection and the vision of this large man with a tiny twin on each side became a favorite TV image. At first, Anissa called him “Mr. Cabot,” but as their relationship grew closer she began calling him “Sabby.” When her cat Tiger (a gift from Brian Keith) had kittens, she named one of them Sabby in his honor.

Admittedly, the series was often over-produced and overly sweet, but it was also pleasant, charming, tender, amusing and most of all, cute. The premise of a sitcom featuring an unconventional family was considered innovative but Family Affair opened the door for future shows like Nanny and the Professor, The Brady Bunch, Diff’rent Strokes, and Who’s the Boss to be accepted and believable. The character of Cindy on The Brady Bunch (played by Susan Olsen) was in fact based on Anissa Jones’ Buffy character in both appearance and demeanor.

**Susan Olsen as Cindy Brady from The Brady Bunch.**

No doubt about it, Anissa Jones was cuter-than-cute. Her natural precocious manner along with her thoughtful freckle-faced visage and sweet plaintive voice made her irresistible to children and adults alike. The vision of the pint sized, pig-tailed prodigy asking questions that she didn’t know the answer to (but had suspicions of what the answers were) is what most fans remember Buffy for. Well, either that or the image of Mrs. Beasley, the doll that started this conversation off. Buffy and Mrs. Beasley were inseparable. Anissa’s character treated the doll not as an inanimate object, but as a close friend with whom she would often talk to and confide in.

**Brian Keith as New York City bachelor Bill Davis 1966.**

Family Affair was, like Fedderson’s previous series My Three Sons starring Fred MacMurray, almost completely geared to fit its leading man. It must be remembered that both MacMurray and Keith were movie stars, not TV stars. Fred MacMurray arranged to have all of his scenes filmed together in a certain block of time, then the rest of the cast would do their own scenes later after MacMurray had left the set. Likewise, Keith’s scenes were filmed all in a row and in a certain time frame, leaving the rest of the cast to work around them after the fact.

It’s a testament to the acting skills of both child stars when you realize that Anissa Jones and Johnny Whitaker could give the type of performances they did while filming scenes and episodes completely out of sequence. Many times Uncle Bill wasn’t even present on the set, let alone in the room and the scenes were patched together later in editing. Keep in mind that they were filming 30 episodes a year during those first two years — many more than are filmed nowadays.

“Family Affair” 1967
Anissa Jones, Sebastian Cabot, Johnny Whitaker.

Naturally, though they got on well with Keith (and Whitaker, in particular, adored him) his absences caused them to naturally gravitate more towards Sebastian Cabot. During the series, Cabot was stricken with bleeding ulcers in real life and had to exit the program for a while. In his absence, another actor stepped in as his brother and took over the role until Cabot returned — 40 pounds lighter than when he’d left! But the Buffy character proved to be so popular with fans that when Anissa broke her leg in real life, it was written into the show. For an entire year of episodes Anissa’s leg was put in a cast and the scripts were revised to reflect her injury so that there would be no loss of production time.

Anissa would play Buffy for the show’s entire five year run. Her schedule was grueling, often requiring her to work seven days a week year round. In June of 1969, the show hit number 1 in the ratings, turning Buffy and Jody into household names. Mrs. Beasley, Buffy’s doll, also became the best-selling doll in America.
Anissa’s fame skyrocketed. She guest-starred in numerous television specials including Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, To Rome With Love, and as a presenter at the 1967 Emmy Awards. Anissa, alongside Jimmy Durante, presented the Monkees with an Emmy for “Best Comedy Series” that year. Merchandising deals soon followed with Buffy paper dolls, Family Affair coloring books and lunch boxes, a Buffy line of children’s clothes, and a Buffy cookbook, not to mention magazines and more TV commercials. The strain on Anissa was beginning to show.

**15-year-old Anissa and her brother John Paul Jones, Jr. (1959-1984).**

Her mother was still a hard working school teacher with bills to pay and much of Anissa’s growing fortune was locked away in a trust fund unavailable for anything other than emergencies until the child star turned 18. With no money to spare for babysitters, Anissa’s younger brother Paul almost always accompanied her to the studio. Anissa was extremely close to Paul and her love and kindness often showed on the set. As the star of a hit TV series, Anissa often received gifts from advertisers, fans and the studio. She always demanded that an identical one for her brother accompany any gift she received. If a gift were not brought for Paul, she would give hers away. Even at this young age, Anissa’s kind heart was beginning to show.

As proof of her kindness, when Earl Graham, a janitor on the Family Affair set died, Anissa had her Mom take out a $400 ad in Variety Magazine wherein Anissa said goodbye to her good friend. Although Earl was in reality nothing more than a janitor on the set, Anissa saw him as a kind friend. Family Affair would last for five seasons and 138 total episodes, garnering seven Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for the show and its stars along the way. But after the 1971 season the show began to slump in the ratings and was abruptly cancelled.

Surprisingly, Anissa was thrilled that the show’s run was over. Now she could finally go to school, hang out with her friends, and just be a normal girl. Most of all it meant she could finally be rid of those cursed pigtails and that stupid Mrs. Beasley doll that the producers insisted she continue to play with even though she was now 13 years old. Anissa Jones had grown tired of show biz.

Next week — Part 2. The Family Affair Curse.

The “Family Affair” Curse, Part 2

Original publish date September 4, 2014. Republished on September 17, 2026.

https://weeklyview.net/2026/09/17/the-family-affair-curse-part-2

Family Affair was one of the most successful family comedies of the 1960s. The show ran for five seasons from 1966 to 1971 and was in the top five for three of those five seasons. In 1969, the show hit number 1 in the ratings, turning fraternal TV twins Buffy and Jody into household names. Mrs. Beasley, Buffy’s doll, became the best-selling doll in America. Buffy’s likeness was everywhere: paper dolls, puzzles, coloring, comic and cookbooks, clothing and lunch boxes, not to mention movies and TV commercials. Everybody knew Buffy, but not many knew her alter-ego, Anissa Jones.

Anissa was born in Lafayette on March 11, 1958. She was cast in the role of Elizabeth “Buffy” Patterson-Davis Jones on Family Affair in 1965 at the age of 8. During filming, she attended school on the studio lot alongside many other child actors. However, a significant amount of her free time was spent promoting the show. She posed for still photos, went on promotional trips, appeared on other series including Laugh-In and an episode of To Rome with Love (as Buffy Davis). Her image was marketed in every conceivable way. In short, she knew life more as Buffy then Anissa.

In 1969, while Family Affair was still in production, Jones was cast alongside Elvis Presley in the movie The Trouble With Girls (and how to get into it.) It was one of Elvis’s last films featuring one of the most diverse casts ever assembled: Vincent Price, John Carradine, Dabney Coleman, the voices of Velma and Fred from “Scooby Doo” and baseball great Duke Snider. For once, Anissa was seen without her trademark Buffy pigtails. Ironically, also appearing (without credit) was Susan Olsen, who would herself become a Buffy clone on The Brady Bunch three weeks after the film hit the theatres. Despite her grueling work schedule and a rocky family life, 12-year-old Anissa was adjusting to her fame quite nicely.

**Anissa Jones alongside Elvis Presley in the movie The Trouble With Girls (and how to get into it.)**

In 1971, the show’s ratings fell out of the top 30 and CBS abruptly canceled it. The network was changing its image to more adult-oriented fare. Family Affair was still popular, with rumors of a switch from CBS to ABC, but in the end ABC decided that having The Brady Bunch was enough and nixed the deal. Far from lamenting the loss of her fame and fortune, Anissa was excited at the prospect of being unemployed. She had been working in show business almost nonstop since the age of 5 and now came an unexpected opportunity for Anissa to be a regular kid. For five years, she worked (often seven days a week), ate, studied (she attended school on set) and sometimes slept at the television studio. All the while tending to her little brother Paul at her own insistence.

**John Paul Jones, Jr. and his sister Alissa.**

Although canceled, CBS almost immediately sold the show into syndication keeping Buffy ever present in the public’s consciousness. Initially, Jones went to school and attempted a normal life, though her acting career was still garnering interest in Tinseltown. She auditioned for the role of satanically possessed Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist (the polar opposite of Buffy) but ultimately Linda Blair was cast.

**Buffy in the Exorcist? Perish the thought!**

Brian Keith asked her to work with him again on The Brian Keith Show, in which he played a Hawaiian pediatrician, but she declined the part. Amazingly, she was offered the role of Iris “Easy” Steensma in Taxi Driver, but turned it down. Only Jones knows why she didn’t take the part. It seemed to be just the sort of edgy, alternative work she was searching for in the wake of Mrs. Beasley and those pigtails. Instead, the role went to Jodie Foster, who was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress for her portrayal. Anissa seemed content to busy herself with school and friends.

She was offered the controversial role of a child prostitute in the film Pretty Baby, a film set in the brothels of New Orleans, whose key role was that of a 12-year-old girl. It seems that every young actress in Hollywood was connected to that film. Tatum O’Neal, Jodie Foster, Linda Blair, Kristy MacNichol and Dana Plato all allegedly turned it down. While others like Diane Lane, Michelle Pfeiffer, Melanie Griffith, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Laura Dern, and Helen Hunt auditioned for it. Sadly, Anissa would be dead before filming began. The role ultimately went to Brooke Shields whose career skyrocketed from it.

Friends and family later said that Anissa made a decision to quit acting after Family Affair ended in 1971. They claim that she auditioned only because she was collecting unemployment which required her to go to three auditions to receive benefits. After her unemployment ran out Anissa never went to another audition. Anissa walked away from fame, money and success with hope of becoming a regular kid.

In the months after the show ended, Anissa’s relationship with her divorced mother continued to deteriorate. For a time, Anissa and her brother Paul moved in with their father. But he died and the children moved back with their mother. Anissa’s grades at Westchester High School in L.A. began to slip and, rather than fighting it out with her mom, she began to couch surf at friend’s houses instead. Her mother reported her as a runaway and Anissa was sent to juvenile detention jail for a short time. Upon her release, Anissa again began hanging out at the beach, drinking and using drugs. Her life was spiraling out of control and any traces of Buffy seemed to be washing away like footprints in the sand. Her mother kicked her out and cut off all support. Hoping to make ends meet until she turned 18 and royalties from Family Affair kicked in, Anissa took a job at Winchell’s Donut Shop in Playa Del Rey. After her eighteenth birthday, Anissa would receive her $63,000 trust fund and $107,800 in U.S. Savings Bonds (actual cash value of $75,000.00) from her Family Affair earnings (the average household income in 1976 was $11,172 per annum). When Anissa turned 18, she and her brother Paul moved into an apartment together. Anissa bought herself a brand-new Ford Pinto and her brother a loaded Camaro that cost twice as much as her own car.

With newfound freedom, recent wealth (nearly three quarters of a million dollars in today’s money), and more drugs than she knew what to do with, Anissa embarked on the final role of her life. She began seeing Allan Kovan, a local partier heavily involved in the L.A. drug scene. Anissa’s substance abuse problem escalated from smoking weed and binge drinking to taking large doses of Quaaludes, angel dust, cocaine, and barbiturates. She was in serious trouble and Uncle Bill, Jody, Cissy and Mr. French were nowhere to help.

On August 28th, 1976, while attending a party at a friend’s house, Anissa consumed a potent cocktail of barbiturates, phencyclidine, cocaine and methaquaalone. Boyfriend Kovan later said he checked on her around 9:30 that morning and she was fine. Later, sometime between 11:00 to 11:30 a.m., her friends found Anissa lying in bed nude and unresponsive. After dressing her in a pair of boxer shorts, they called the paramedics an hour later at 12:29 p.m.

**The house where Anissa Jone died. 2312 Littler Lane in Oceanside, California**.

Paramedics and firemen were on scene at 12:34. Anissa was found face up, covered by a blanket and a sheet. At 4’ 11” and 85 lbs, one of the paramedics mistook her as a much younger girl and frantically tried to resuscitate her even though the arm, neck and face were already in rigor. They attached the electrodes and difib’ed her once but it was clearly useless, and the order was given to cease resuscitation efforts. Anissa died from what the coroner, who placed the time of death somewhere between 4:30-6:30 a.m., said was “one of the most massive overdoses I’ve ever seen”. She was just 18 years old.

Friend, fellow student and partygoer Steve Hanford recalled later, “The night Anissa died was weird. She wasn’t being very social. She and some other kids stayed in a bedroom taking angel dust and coke. When Anissa came out of the bedroom she said she and some friends were going down to Oceanside to visit her friend Helen Hennessey. The next thing I heard about Anissa was that she was dead. It blew my mind because I thought she was too smart to destroy herself with drugs. She didn’t seem depressed the week before she died.”

**McCormick Funeral Home in Inglewood California.**

Her body was taken to McCormick Funeral Home in Inglewood and then to the Pacific Crest crematory in Redondo Beach for cremation. There were no official services held for her and on September 1, 1976 her ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean. But the story doesn’t end there. For years after Anissa’s death, one of the very first in a long line of tragic TV child star premature deaths, became an urban legend known as the “Curse of Family Affair.”

Sebastian Cabot was forced to leave the series for an entire season after being stricken with bleeding ulcers. He had to be replaced by another actor until his return, several months and some 40 pounds lighter. In 1977 Cabot suffered a stroke, his second in three years. He died on August 22, 1977 at the age of 59. His death coming less than a year after Anissa’s. Like his diminutive pig-tailed costar, he was cremated.

**Brian Keith’s stepmother, tragic actress Peg Entwistle**.

Before the show aired, Brian Keith suffered the real life loss of a child when his 8-year-old son Michael died from a sudden case of pneumonia. Keith’s stepmother was Peg Entwistle, a well-known Broadway actress who committed suicide by jumping from the “H” of the famous Hollywood Sign in 1932. In later life, Keith suffered from emphysema and lung cancer despite having quit smoking 10 years earlier. On June 24, 1997, he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Malibu, two months after his daughter Daisy committed suicide. Keith left a handwritten note in which he wrote “The end is here. I’m finished. The pain is too much. Now it’s time for me to join our little Daisy. She needs me. She didn’t want to be without me here, so she’ll have me again over there. Don’t be sad. This had to come soon.”

Johnny Whitaker fell into drug and alcohol abuse for nine years during the 1980-90s before an intervention led him to a 12-step program. He has been clean and sober for 17 years. Eight years after Anissa’s accidental overdose, her brother, Paul, would also die from a drug overdose.

The host of the party at which Anissa attended that fateful night was a 14-year-old girl who lived at the house with her divorced father. This girl died at age 34 in a violent car crash in Keaau, Hawaii in 1996.
Today, Anissa Jones is entertaining a whole new generation of children whose parents, many of whom grew up watching her, show them TV Land reruns and DVD episodes of Family Affair. All five seasons are available on DVD. They are a delightful piece of entertainment for young and old. The story of Anissa Jones is a sad one, but her legacy still shines through the innocent countenance of freckle-faced, pig-tailed little Buffy Davis.

Creepy history, Ghosts, Indianapolis, Irvington Ghost Tours

Stories from the Irvington Ghost Tours.

October 23, 2026October 23, 2026 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

In the spirit of the season, here’s a podcast from the Irving Theatre in Indianapolis, Indiana on October 20, 2026. Tim Poynter, Cindy Adkins and Rhonda Hunter joined me for this “spirited” conversation.

Here’s the link to the podcast:

https://radioforthepeople.com/Irvington/Season7-Episode1

Creepy history, Ghosts, Indianapolis, Irvington Ghost Tours, Weekly Column

The Ghosts of Playground Productions in Irvington.

October 22, 2025 Alan E. Hunter- Irvington

**Andrea and Adam Long of Playground Productions.**

Original publish date October 16, 2025.

https://weeklyview.net/2025/10/16/the-ghosts-of-playground-productions-in-irvington/

One of the enjoyable aspects of leading ghost tours in Irvington every October is hearing the new ghost stories and spooky tales associated with the buildings we pass along the route. For the past few years, Adam Long and his wife, Andrea, have allowed the tours access to their building, Playground Productions Studio at 5529 N. Bonna Ave., as a jumping-off point to rest and recover after tours. Some of you may know Adam by his stage name, Adam Riviere, a homage to his mother’s whose maiden name. Most importantly, the studio hosts the crew from the Magick Candle every Friday and Saturday night during October for psychic readings for our tour guests and visitors, with the proceeds going to fund the food bank at Gaia Works (6125 E. Washington St.).

**Playground Productions Studio at 5529 N. Bonna Ave. during the Halloween Festival.**

Adam graduated from Martinsville High School, studied at Butler University, and attended IUPUI for his graduate work. Adam is an accomplished musician and an artist in his own right. Andrea, originally from London, Kentucky, graduated from North Laurel High School there and from IUPUI in Indianapolis. Andrea is quiet, but when she talks, she speaks with an easy southern drawl that somehow soothes the listener’s ears. As I write this, the couple is celebrating their eleventh wedding anniversary. Adam and Andrea were married in 2014, but have been together since 2008. I first met Adam over a decade ago, when he was a guest on one of my ghost tours. After hearing the Abraham Lincoln ghost train story, which concludes each tour, Adam was sprung. He later informed me that the story resonated with him so deeply that he commissioned an artist friend to create a painting of the ethereal visage for display in his studio office. It comes as no surprise that Adam’s studio is located along the historic corridor of the railroad tracks upon which Lincoln’s funeral train traveled back on April 30, 1865.

**Indianapolis Star Sunday December 25, 1921.**

Adam’s studio has an interesting history. Adam stated, “It was originally the Coal & Lime Company in Irvington. That was why they wanted to call this area the Coal Yard district, because this is the spot where the trucks would come and pick up the coal to deliver to the areas close by.” The name is a bit of a misnomer, however. While it is true that the company sold “Hoosier Red Pepper Coal” harvested “clean” and “hand picked” from “Indiana’s Richest Coal Mines,” contrary to it’s strict definition, the company specialized in providing hydrated mason’s lime used in the manufacture of common bedrock building materials like glazed tile, fire brick, cement blocks, and common bricks.

**August 3rd, 1922, Indianapolis Star ad.**

**Irvington Masonic Lodge 666 in 1922.**

On August 3rd, 1922, an ad on page 10 of the Indianapolis Star boasted that the Irvington Coal & Lime Company supplied the “Western Brick as well as other builder’s supplies used in the construction of the new Masonic Temple,” a.k.a. Irvington Masonic Lodge 666, whose cornerstone was laid the year before. Adam was quick to point out to visitors to the property that a portion of the foundation for the old brick factory remains in place several yards away from his studio entrance. Adam informed, “In the early 1950s, a company called Foamcraft bought the building.”

Foamcraft still exists. According to their website, “In 1952, Robert T. Elliott, the founder of our company, started the Foamcraft Rubber Company. As a District Sales Manager for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, he was responsible for helping to start several foam rubber distributors. Foamcraft was his special passion, though, and in founding our company, he set a foundation for business integrity and dedication to service, as well as a vision to develop long-term relationships with our customers.” Foamcraft makes specialized cushioning used in furniture, beds, minivans, boats, and other products. The company buys large blocks of foam rubber called “Buns” or “Blocks” and cuts them to smaller sizes and shapes as needed by their customers. It was, and remains, a family-run operation with a very high-tenured workforce staffed by generations of families working “cutting foam” for a variety of customer products. The company boasts a 99.9% on-time production and delivery reputation.

Elliott opened his Irvington foam factory on Bonna Avenue in 1957, and it remained there for the next 44 years. Foamcraft briefly relocated in 2001 to a leased building on Post Road before moving to a much larger facility in Greenfield in 2016, where it remains today. Company headquarters are located at 9230 Harrison Park Ct. in between the Fort Benjamin branch library and Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Lawrence. Foamcraft also has a manufacturing facility in Elkhart. They never forgot their ties to Irvington, though. Employees referred to the old 20,000 square foot factory, made up of several buildings, simply as the “Bonna.” According to their Web site, employees remember the Bonna facility as “dark and spread out with rooms everywhere. It was sort of claustrophobic with low ceilings, and we worked elbow-to-elbow. It had slippery floors throughout the facility, which sometimes required us to spread sand or sawdust in certain areas.” Despite the distinctly ominous Irvington location’s appearance, inside and out, Foamcraft’s employees described the working atmosphere as “Valhalla.”

One former employee, Jim Quakenbush, recalls that Foamcraft Inc. “ was located on Bonna Ave. just east of Ritter Ave. I worked there for two summers, unloading railroad cars in 1970 & 1971. I have fond memories of working there. Rob Elliott, whose father owned the company, worked with me unloading train cars full of large refrigerator-sized foam rubber “buns”. I think Rob became the CEO and may still be. The warehouse building still stands, but the office building is gone. The railroad track is gone. I really enjoyed the people. My supervisor was Dave Fisher. Great guy. Don Scruggs was a truck driver, funny as hell. Larry Harding worked with me. [The] Sewing department had Ursie Hert, Ralph Wainwright, from Jamaica. Clayton Sneed was a saw operator. Paul was an autistic laborer who used to irritate Ralph. I laughed so hard listening to them argue back and forth. All in good fun. Good memories.”

**Interior of Playground Productions Studio.**

The old Foamcraft building has quite a history to it, and apparently, a few ghosts as well. Adam recalled, “When I first moved in here, while I locked up at night, stepping out the door, there was a feeling. It wasn’t really ominous, but it definitely gave you a creepy feeling. “ When asked if he feels a presence in the building, Adam stated, “Yes, sometimes when I’m alone in the building, I can hear sharp knocks on the wood in the studio. When I check, nothing is there to explain it.” Adam and Andrea say they don’t ever feel uncomfortable in their building, and they don’t think there is any dark energy connected to their workspace. “We just take it as it comes, we’re used to it now.”

The factory site was visited by tragedy in the autumn of 1968. The front page of the November 12, 1968, Indy News announced “Plant Fire Kills Two Women. 33 Escape Blaze on Eastside.” At 3:34 in the afternoon, firefighters responded to a three-alarm fire at the Foamcraft factory plant. Mrs. Hilda F. Muffler, 59, of 6550 East Troy Avenue, and Mrs. Marjorie J. Smith, 40, of 152 South Summit Street, were killed in the blaze. Mrs. Muffler was employed as a seamstress, and Mrs. Smith as a cutter. Authorities theorized that the two women may have collided and been knocked unconscious during the frenzy to escape the fire. The women died of smoke inhalation and heat. According to the article, Fire Department investigators said the fire was caused by ‘misuse of electricity,’ but did not elaborate.

The article further reports, “An employee, Jack Miller, 56, 250 Audubon Circle, said he was seated at his desk and heard a crackling sound. He looked at a nearby thermostat and said he saw sparks flying from the mechanism. Miller said he ran into another room to get a fire extinguisher, but when he returned, the sparks had ignited stacks of latex foam rubber nearby. There was nothing I could do with the fire extinguisher by the time I got back. It was out of control.” Another Star article quotes Miller as saying he saw a “flash of lightning” come from the wall thermostat and strike a pile of foam. Deputy Marion County Coroner and chief of the fire prevention bureau, Donald E. Bollinger, said the victim’s bodies suffered no burns and were found lying face down perpendicular, one atop the other, in the one-story concrete block plant. The women were found within 4 feet of an office door and only 8 feet from the nearest exit door.

**Foamcraft Building Exit Door After The Fire in 1968.**

They were discovered to be some 70 feet from the nearest fire damage about 25 minutes after the first alarm had sounded. Other employees challenged the notion that the women panicked trying to escape. Bollinger later theorized that since Mrs. Smith’s coat was found lying next to her body, the women may have attempted to reach a restroom to retrieve their coats and purses before being overcome by smoke.

**Coroner’s Report From the Foamcraft Fire.**

The fire was spectacular, with flames shooting over 100 feet high in the sky, and the massive plumes of heavy black smoke could be seen from all over the city of Indianapolis. The high-intensity heat hampered firefighters’ efforts to extinguish it quickly. The first alarm came at 3:34, the second at 3:44, and the third at 4:42 pm. Emergency first responders arrived quickly with over 20 pieces of firefighting equipment and 65 firefighters. John T. O’Brien, owner of the Bonna Printing Company at 5543 Bonna Avenue, reported that his adjacent building suffered only minor smoke and water damage during the conflagration. Other adjacent businesses, Krauter Equipment Company & the Firestone Tire & Rubber Company, also reported minor damage. At 12:17 am, the blaze briefly reignited, and firemen were again called to extinguish the flames. That second fire had ignited beneath the collapsed roof of the factory and was brought under control at 1:17 am.

The Foamcraft building was destroyed in the inferno. Investigators determined the fire started along the north wall of the “blackened pillow room” on the northeast corner of the building. Deputy Chief Bollinger later speculated that the fire could have been prevented if the wall receptacle box, which contained the mechanism controlling the heating blowers, had been properly covered. One unnamed employee told Bollinger that he tried to make a metal cover for the box the week before the blaze, but was shocked during the attempted installation and was unable to do so. That same employee said that he had informed company officials of the problem, but it had not been fixed yet.

Learning that Adam and Andrea’s building may have a resident ghost, one could believe that the spirits of Playgorund Productions Studio are those of the tragic victims of the Foamcraft factory fire from 1968, but that does not appear to be the case. Tim Poynter, intuitive psychic empath who has worked with me on the tours for decades and now spends every October Friday and Saturday night in the building, admits that he encounters those spirits regularly, “But they aren’t necessarily attached to the building. They seem to be just passing through. Sometimes the tour guests bring them, and at other times, they are brought in by the readers.” Likewise, longtime tour volunteer Cindy Adkins, who was featured as a psychic intuitive in an episode of Zak Bagans’ Ghost Adventures in 2019, does not feel a resident ghost in the building. “They’re not in here permanently. I don’t feel them inside, but I do think some spirits are roaming around outside the building.” said Cindy. Indeed, it should be noted that the spot where the two employees died is located outside the studio, about 20-30 yards northwest of the door.

Today, Playground Productions Studio is a far cry from the old, dark, and spooky, chopped-up Foamcraft factory. The working studio is now full of light and texture. Walls are constructed of a naturally grounded hardwood facia and are peppered by soft blankets buffering any echoes and sounds that might affect the recording work. The artists, bands, and performers who regularly work or visit the Playground are joyful and carefree whenever there is an event or party going on. Knowing the depth of feeling that former Foamcraft employees have for the old “Bonna” location, it is easy to imagine that if there are spirits hovering around the property, inside or out, they do so with mirth and glee.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/foamcraft-inc-_the-story-of-foamcraft-inc-activity-7089985534889975808-y92J/

Foamcraft has created a fantastic, informative, and historical video with scenes shot at the old factory on Bonna. It can be found on the Web at: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/foamcraft-inc-_the-story-of-foamcraft-inc-activity-7089985534889975808-y92J/