Harloween: The Haunting Of Hinsdale House Part 1

[Music] [Music] hello everybody and welcome back to my channel thank you for joining me for another halloween video so i know some of you were here with me last halloween halloween 2019 before the end of the world happened and surprisingly one of the most popular videos from last halloween was the skin walker ranch video and i say surprisingly because i i pretty much did the skin walker ranch video because it was something i was interested in and i wanted to look into it more and i kind of used halloween as an excuse to do that and you guys ended up really liking it so this video today and the one to follow because this will be a two-parter but i will record them both today so i can put them up um basically one right after the other this video today and this topic today is in my opinion the skinwalker ranch of 2020 so i am very very excited to bring this to you today i mean having lived in upstate new york my whole life it's not a surprise to me how many stories of spirits and hauntings arise from the area my own town rochester new york holds a prominent place in the spiritualism movement that swept the country in the 1800s now spiritualism is a religious movement based on the belief that the spirits of the dead exist and they have the ability as well as the desire to communicate with the living the afterlife or the spirit world as spiritualists call it does exist and in it the echoes of the dead continue to live on to exist and evolve on a separate plane now it seems like these beliefs first emerged in the burned over district of new york which refers to the western and central areas of the state it was here during the early 19th century where dozens dozens of new religious movements of the second great awakening began now at this time the area was still a largely unsettled frontier with very little organized religious presence which left many of its occupants open to what they call folk religion or customs that were under the umbrella of an established religion but outside of its doctrines or practices mormonism arose in a little town called palmyra new york where joseph smith jr lived in 1828 in 1834 we saw the formation of the millerites and we talked about the millerites and their founder william miller during our series on david crush and the branch davidians and of course we can't forget the fox sisters of hydesville new york who claimed they were contacted by the spirit of a murdered man buried in their basement and who performed many seances in rochester new york and all over the country bringing more followers to the movement and i also have an entire video on the fox sisters which i will link below in the description box my personal opinion on ghosts and the spirit world has always been an open minded one as a person who loves halloween and scary movies who enjoys spending my free time wandering through cemeteries and who's always been sort of morbidly interested in all things dark and terrifying i would like to believe there is something other than what we know something that allows us to continue on in some capacity after we die but i'd never really experienced anything but feelings or sensations so i was obviously still on the fence about it that was before i took the two hour car drive to hinsdale new york to visit the famously haunted hinsdale house it's been called the mount everest of haunted houses and is arguably the most famous haunted house in new york state there have been deaths connected to this house and more than one exorcism performed in its rooms since it is so old and so widely talked about it can be hard to determine fact from fiction but it's still worth telling you where it all is alleged to have begun and we're going to go way back back into time before we continue i'd like to take a moment and thank the sponsor for today's video raycon raycon is built around the mission that everyone deserves to enjoy great audio the company was co-founded by singer songwriter ray j because he 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to raycon for sponsoring this video don't forget to click the link in the description box or go to by raycon dot com stephanie harlow for 15 off your first purchase let's continue on with the video so it seems the first people to have inhabited the area of western new york after the glacial retreat were the clovis people in 10 000 bc followed by the lamochas and then the hopewell native americans in 300 a.d now the hopewell people were mound builders which means they buried their dead in large mounds of earth many of these mounds still exist today and they would consist of several hundred tons of dirt clay and stone now there are legends that a horrible massacre took place on the site of current day main street in hinsdale new york a newspaper article published in the patriot and free press in september of 2009 claims that in 1737 local native americans sent a proclamation to alexander hamilton stating their opposition to the formation of the united states of america the article says quote at this time there were four other villages in the iroquois confederation who would not sign the proclamation according to rombacher the iroquois confederation became upset and ordered those villages destroyed end quote during this campaign allegedly over 800 men women and children were killed and it is believed this horrific slaughter holds the responsibility for spiritual disturbances in the hinsdale area now let's keep in mind the man referred to in this article michael rambacher was a self-proclaimed paranormal investigator not a historian and some of these times dates and details don't add up firstly the iroquois confederation started off with five nations and grew to six nations by 1722 but there was never a point in time where there were seven nations additionally anybody who knows anything about american history especially early american history and who is you know maybe a big fan of alexander hamilton like me would tell you that alexander hamilton was born in 1757 and he wouldn't even set foot in the new world aka america for several years after so i'm tending to lean in the direction that this story is is not true however we cannot dispute that the early days of this nation were wild and violent and many people were slaughtered the entirety of new york state is essentially a native american burial ground so it's tough to dispute the possibility that there was some sort of massacre or that there are burial grounds in and around hinsdale new york now there's also the legend that hinsdale house used to be an inn that was located on a stagecoach trail and the two brothers who operated it would use it as an oasis of safe lodging to lure travelers in they would then rob these unsuspecting people and drag them to a large tree across the street and hang them before burying their bodies on the property or even sometimes storing them in the basement during the winter because it was very cold and the low temperatures would preserve them until the ground thawed out in the spring there are also reports of unnatural deaths happening on the property such as a 16 year old boy being fatally struck and murdered by a buzzsaw i used the words legend and reported because as these things go we can't totally prove that they happened but what cannot be denied is the experience of one family who lived on that property in the early 1970s clara and phil dandy got married in 1955 and raised their four children mike beth laura and mary in buffalo new york clara worked as an office manager at buffalo state college and phil was working as a crane operator for ford motor company they were a normal family happy for the most part but the pressures of work and life took their toll and in addition to that clara and phil had been raised very differently as children and growing up so they would often clash on matters especially religion clara had been raised as a devout catholic and her husband did eventually convert but clara didn't feel like it ever really took in him as the years passed the couple slowly grew apart but then they took a trip to a cabin in allegheny state park during the summer of 1967 and clara saw a glimmer of hope for the future of their family getting out of the city and getting closer to nature seemed to have a positive effect on phil and the kids now claire dandy wrote a book about her time and her family's time at the hinsdale house and in this book she wrote that when they were camping in allegheny state park each morning they would wake up to a heavy mountain fog that burned off before noon and their family spent many blissful days tramping around the woods or driving around the park looking for wild animals the children thrived in this relaxed atmosphere and when it was time to go home at the end of the week they did so with reluctance not wanting to leave behind their peaceful sanctuary the happy memories from their time in the cabin drove phil and clara to start searching for their own cabin to purchase the following fall they found the perfect place in cuba new york and they bought it that winter and for a time they were able to recapture that feeling of peace but clara remembered that it wasn't long before her husband stopped coming with him on the weekends and it would just be her and the kids so she decided they needed a more permanent getaway it would be the best thing for the family if they all moved out of the city altogether and began living in the country now luckily the woman who had rented them the cabin in allegheny park told clara she had another property nearby a farmhouse that needed a little tlc but had good bones and was in a very beautiful area on a clear spring day phil and clara drove to the house that would soon be theirs with four excited kids in the back shouting every time they saw a deer now clara remembered a growing feeling of excitement and anticipation as they got closer until finally the house came into view she wrote in her book quote situated about four miles from the town of hinsdale it sat rather importantly on its own little protected pocket of land surrounded by heavily wooded hills it sported a newly dug pond sitting to one side how the kids loved that pond all in all the property consisted of eight acres the single story half of the house contained a country-style kitchen a utility room and a bedroom the lower story of the other side boasted the living room a bedroom and the bath the upstairs had one good sized bedroom a small bedroom and a closet masquerading as another bedroom facing the dangerously steep steps as one descended was the door to a crawl space a feature of the house with which i was not familiar having always lived in houses with addicts the awkward crawl space was not my idea of a storage space it had a peaked roof and was almost inaccessible when the door was open hot dusty air rushed out looking in one could see the neat brick chimney along the angled rafters another feature of the house which offended my city sensibilities was the root cellar now i have lived in houses containing cellars all my life but the root cellar was something else again the only entrance was through a rather narrow door sat in the bathroom of all places about a foot from the toilet one would find it difficult to imagine a more awkward location descending the rickety stairs and coming to the dirt floor made my flesh crawl the side walls were rough-hewn stone there was only a small area in which the ceiling was high enough to allow one to stand end quote although the house was different obviously than the family was used to there was still an electric excitement within them the scenery surrounding the home was beautiful it sat on eight acres of land with a pond and they felt they could be happy there clara dandy wrote in her book quote it didn't take long for us to trade our cabinet for the house thus it began end quote during the following spring clara and the kids made several trips back and forth from buffalo to hinsdale to move small things with the family station wagon and this is when the first incidences of car trouble began something that would become incredibly common for the family and for those who visited them at their new house they had a 1970s station wagon that always had run perfectly never given them any trouble but as soon as they were driving regularly to hinsdale the car began to overheat the first time it happened they had to enlist the help of a local mechanic to get them back to buffalo but issue after issue with the radiator would follow coincidentally only when they were near the house so they ended up having to get rid of the station wagon thinking it was something wrong with the car on july 18th 1970 the family made the drive from buffalo for the last time now clara's mother and clara's brother gordon helped them move and claire's mother and brother had gone ahead of the dandy family and they were supposed to meet them at the hinsdale house a few hours later when clara arrived she was stunned to see that her new house was completely filled with bees inside and outside she wrote quote every window was so black with them it was impossible to see out end quote her brother gordon told her that he'd had to push through a wall of bees in order to get inside the house and call an exterminator clara didn't understand what was going on during all the other trips they'd made out there she'd never seen one bee so she consulted with a local bee expert who informed her that it was not common for bees to swarm together in that way especially at that time of year the exterminator arrived and was also stunned by the sheer number of bees taking over the house but he sprayed anyways and left after telling the family that they should no longer have a bee problem after he left the family got to work sweeping up heaping piles of dead bees and putting them in garbage bags but the bee problem did not go away in her book clara says quote we were troubled for many months by minor incidences with bees including honey dripping from our ceiling until finally the queen bee must have had enough and drew the swarm to better and i presume more welcoming quarters end quote so as someone who has physically been on this property i can tell you there are still many bees there as well as swarms of bold flies in fact as i was interviewing the owner of the house dan outside i had to keep swatting them away but they were undeterred flying away to recoup and then swarming me again but we will get to that soon enough because at the time this was happening i had no idea that the bees and the flies were even a thing about the house i had no idea that they were a problem for the previous owners of the house and that they had been tied and connected to high levels of supernatural activity seen at the house after this minor b disruption the dandies settled into country life surprisingly quickly for city folks they had a lot of animals and pets they had two dogs named bunky and tigger a raccoon named princess four guinea pigs two parakeets two finches and a woodchuck called nipper the fall after they moved in the family was also given a kitten named fluffy who was supposed to keep the house and grounds mouse free but she would soon become the constant companion of the dandy's youngest daughter laura as soon after moving in the family dogs began bringing home bones not the small bones of scampering animals but large bones that could not be identified clara regrets the fact that she did not keep these bones so they could later be tested but at that time she had no idea how bad things would get so she tossed them in the garbage clara eventually returned to work in buffalo making the long 150 mile round trip commute every day monday through friday her first day back to work claire left hinsdale at 5 am and returned around 6 pm that evening when she walked into the house she could smell dinner cooking and she immediately felt a sense of peace of returning home that was until she called her daughter mary to come in and eat now mary came riding down the road on her bike crying and bleeding from her face she'd seemingly hit a rock in the road while on her bike and she'd been thrown over the handlebars thrown to the ground and she hit her chin they had to drive to the doctors where mary was given six stitches and the feeling of peace in clara evaporated she continued to try and commute and keep going to work but it eventually became too much and she decided to stay home and take care of the kids and the house finding comfort in the daily duties of caring for a family and you may say you know mary falling off of her bike and hurting her face that's just kids kids get hurt they have to get stitches etc but there would be just a series of these accidents and of this family sort of being at the mercy of whatever was happening in this house and they would constantly be injured in these freak accidents it was like they suddenly had become the most clumsy family of all time except that wasn't what was happening it was like a force was was causing them to become injured now one weekend clara was in the house and she was doing what she loved you know the daily duties of caring for a family carefully folding laundry and washing dishes when she heard several gunshots outside now this is not an uncommon thing to hear in the country so she thought nothing of it until her phone rang the dandy's closest neighbors were a little ways down the road but they had three children roughly the same age as the dandy children and the kids had taken to playing together now clara's son and daughter mike and beth had been playing with these kids in a nearby field when they had apparently been shot at by an unseen person the kids were forced to army crawl until they were out of the field and they could run to the closest house and ask for help the neighbors told clara that there was an eccentric man who lived nearby and it could have been him so she called the state police and reported it requesting that the man be interviewed the police officer on the phone told her you know maybe whoever was shooting had mistaken the kids for woodchucks to which clara replied quote i don't know about your children but mine do not look like woodchucks end quote now they never figured out who had shot at those kids and the matter dropped these same neighbor kids who had lived in hinsdale new york all of their life also told clara about a local ghost legend they said that at certain times of the day a ghostly man could be seen walking down mcmahon road now mcmahon road happened to be the road that the hinsdale house was on the road that the dandy family lived on so the dandy family laughed it off at first dismissing it as a fun local lore but a few days after mike the dandy's only son told his mother clara that he had been walking with bob and matt the neighbor boys when a man seemed to appear out of nowhere now when mike asked the other boys who this man was they told him it was the ghost obviously as casually as if they were talking about what they'd eat for breakfast that morning mike didn't believe it the guy was dressed like a farmer so mike felt that if he could catch up to him and talk to him he could prove to the superstitious locals that there was no ghost mike began running after this figure of the man but when he was about six feet behind him the man stepped behind a tree and vanished mike was thoroughly shook by this experience and he recounted it for clara later that night who just smiled and thought how fun it was to be a kid and think you were seeing ghosts you know she would miss those old days when she had an imagination and she'd get so easily spooked now the neighbors also had a little daughter her name was pat and pat did not think it was funny or something to write off so easily she had been spending a lot of time with the dandy daughters and could often be found at the dandy home and she told the family that she'd seen this ghost many times she described him as a black man and when clara tried to clarify asking the young girl if she meant black is in skin color pat thought about this for a moment and responded no she just meant a black man intrigued clara looked up the significance of such an apparition and found that in all the books she read the appearance of a black man usually meant you were seeing satan himself at this time clara did not believe pat was seeing this ghost in fact it just made her concerned for the little girl's state of mind but the idea of this spirit figure continued to come up with her family one day this little neighbor girl pat and clara's daughter beth ran into the house hysterically screaming that the ghost had been watching them from the top of the hill the only thing was each girl had seen a different figure beth said he was dressed like a farmer kind of like the same figure mike had seen but pat insisted he was just a black man it wasn't long after settling into the house that one of their dogs vanished tigger was a sweet golden collie who never ventured too far from the house but now he was just gone there wasn't a lot of traffic on the dirt road next to the house he hadn't appeared to have been hit by a car and he was usually always finding his way back home whenever he would wander too far so clara began to worry that he may have been shot she'd write in the paper that some locals were using stray dogs for target practice and as the days passed and tigger was never found the family had to come to terms with the fact that he probably never would be the loss of tigger crushed mary who had loved the dog so they took her to a local animal shelter and let her pick out another dog a female golden collie who looked and acted so much like tigger that they adopted her that day now the dandies would only collect more animals as time went on peanuts was a lovable clumsy half german and half saint bernard puppy that phil had gifted to his wife peanuts loved to clamor around on the frozen ice of the pond during the winter and the whole family took to him right away they also took in a descented skunk named dally and they got another cat named tish who somehow ended up climbing into the dryer and was killed so many strange occurrences would begin to happen during the winter of 1970 and clara referred to these months as a baptism by fire it was the coldest winter on record 20 degrees below freezing without even counting the wind chill on february 1st 1971 the water lines froze and wouldn't thaw out until the end of april so the family needed to haul water in from the old well outside it took all of them to haul in enough water for one bath so each member of the family was only allowed one bath each week they had to heat freezing water on the stove to cook and clara will never forget the experience of living in that old rickety house during this very treacherous winter she says in her book quote as long as i live i'll remember hauling water for baths through winds so strong that a full pail of water swung to a position horizontal with the ground the snow in the meantime was so deep in the road that the snowplow would get stuck end quote one evening while clara was hauling bucket after bucket of water into the house through freezing temperatures and unforgiving winds she saw something in the sky approaching from the south it was moving at a high rate of speed and in the frozen silence clara could tell the object was making no sound she called the kids over and they all stood rooted to the spot staring up into the sky and trying to figure out what it could be clara described the object as large and round with no windows outlining it she said that as they stood there and watched the object veered off suddenly and disappeared into the sky to the north the kids would report seeing similar objects many times in the night sky over their house and these flying objects would sometimes appear to execute intricate maneuvers clara admitted even as she was writing her book that she felt self-conscious putting these words on paper because she knew that nobody would believe her the following summer clara was in bed on a hot night and she would sleep with the windows open to hopefully allow a slight breeze to break through the oppressive heat when suddenly she was awoken to find her bedroom completely flooded with this bright fluorescent light as she was attempting to shake the sleep from her brain and figure out where this light was coming from she heard her son mike yelling from downstairs that the whole house was lit up and he thought the source of the light was coming from outside his window clara knew that if the downstairs where mike's bedroom was and the upstairs where she slept were both flooded with light the source could not be coming from outside of mike's window and it had to be coming directly from above for 10 minutes the light remained during which the family huddled in the middle of clara's bedroom staying away from the windows out of fear and then as suddenly as it had appeared it was gone as the light faded clara rushed to the window and claims she saw the same or similar round object that she had spotted in the sky the winter before heading away from their house silently at high speed and a few days later there were reports in the paper of flying saucers being seen in the area it was admittedly a rough start for the dandy family in hinsdale they had dealt with a mass infestation of bees the day they moved in they had lost one dog and had a cat accidentally die in the dryer the kids were suddenly talking about ghosts and ufos and the winter had almost broken them mentally but the family did not give up or turn and run as soon as the snow melted they just knew they needed to be better prepared for the next season so they installed new heating and water systems and had contractors come to blow in new insulation they also needed to replace all the old windows with new aluminum storm windows now this obviously would all cost a substantial amount of money and with clara no longer working the brunt of the financial responsibility fell on her husband phil who had become significantly more withdrawn as time went on as the months passed clara noticed that she and her family had become increasingly more clumsy and were having more accidents than usual the first one was mary falling off her bike but laura had also taken a spill off her bike and developed a staph infection in her foot mike had spilled boiling water on himself and scalded his stomach clara had broken her finger while trying to repair a window and she had to wear a splint for months mike cut a tendon in his hand while making a vase out of a glass bottle phil cut his thumb to the bone while trying to push their car out of the snow beth had fallen during a gym class and broken her arm permanently disfiguring it laura broke her foot while exercising clara's own mother had fallen down the stairs the first week they lived there and broken her leg claire's mother and father had been in a total of three accidents while returning to buffalo from visits in hinsdale mike would go on to have a car accident in 1973 which would leave him in a coma and almost end his life the month after this beth's boyfriend bought a new car and brought it over to the house to show off after leaving he had an accident that left him badly wounded and it took years to completely recover in early 1974 the family themselves were in four different car accidents phil had loaned his car to a school friend of the kids and this this kid was planning to use it to drive to a dance when he was hit by a car with its headlights off while driving over a bridge later mike driving the same car after it had been repaired was traveling down a hill when he lost control and hit a tree the car was totaled so they bought a new one mike and his friend would later borrow this new car to drive to nearby olean when a motorist ran a red light and t-boned the car with both of them inside of it phil was driving a car that he and clara had bought for mike so he could go away to college it was a 1970 red maverick and phil had borrowed it to drive to work as he was coming back home that evening a truck ran him off the road the car flipped over three times before coming to a stop upside down trapping phil inside of it clara wrote in her book quote the trouble wasn't just with our cars people would drive up to visit and upon parking in our yard their exhaust systems would fall off or their brakes would fail or their transmission suddenly refused to work end quote once again as someone who was on this property i want to throw in a little personal story of the one time i visited hinsdale house this could be a coincidence it most likely is but you be the judge i went there with my daughter nevae we parked and got out of the car we were inside and outside the house for probably about 90 minutes total before we got back into the car to drive home now the first three times i tried starting my car the engine would not turn over it just would not start and at this time this was a brand new car a lease i'd been leasing it for about six months once i got it started we proceeded home talking excitedly about the things we had just witnessed inside which i will get to at the end of the series of videos when suddenly i saw police lights flashing behind me i got pulled over for speeding and received a ticket maybe i was driving a little fast because i was excited to get home and upload my footage to the computer but i literally never get pulled over for speeding or otherwise i'm a very cautious driver to the point where i didn't even know where my registration was in the car when i got pulled over because i never ever have had to produce it it was definitely strange and i didn't know until later when reading claire's book that car trouble was something that plagued hinsdale house and it wasn't just car trouble plaguing the dandies tigger going missing the cat dying in the dryer these were not the last pets the family would have to say goodbye to while living in hinsdale clara wrote in her book quote we have always had pets and had non-die except of old age however since we moved into the house we lost one canary two parakeets one dog three guinea pigs and a raccoon in mary's room three of the animals died in a two-month period and with no apparent cause our vet finally advised us to keep the pets out of that room end quote there's also the matter of money disappearing which was kind of a big deal to a family where every penny counted clara wrote quote sums of money began disappearing usually small nevertheless it taxed our limited finances the money always disappeared when there was no run around to take it and often from a locked container our financial situation steadily worsened and we began to have the distinct feeling that we were not wanted in the house end quote but we're getting ahead of ourselves because in my opinion the creepiest occurrences have yet to be talked about in 1970 when clara was still working she returned home one day to find her children very upset claiming someone had broken into their house the family had three large dogs so clara was dubious that someone could have entered without setting these dogs off without causing them to bark but when she explored the rooms she found that someone or something had definitely been inside their clothes had been pulled out of the drawers and closets only clara's and the girls closed though now microphils mary's record player had been thrown into a wall across the room and binky the family dog that was usually the most protective was found outside either put out there by someone else or he ran out on his own because he was afraid of whatever was in the house now in the hills above the house there were campgrounds rv campgrounds you know people could come and kind of park their rv or set up a tent and just you know stay there for a weekend or a week and in may of 1971 it was the season for people to start arriving with their tents and their rvs to enjoy a peaceful weekend in the wilderness the land where the campgrounds were built had originally belonged to the hinsdale house but as the years went on and the property changed hands much of the land had been parceled off and sold one sunday in may clara took their dog lassie for a walk at twilight up the road into the hill that leads to the campsites so she just basically wanted to check it out you know see how many people were there get out get some fresh air but as she was walking lassie the dog stopped dead and lassie's ears perked up claire stopped too straining her inferior human ears to try and pick up whatever lasts he had heard and she suddenly could hear strains of music winding through the trees to clara it sounded like a choir rehearsal so she kept walking in the direction of the music to see what it was in her book she wrote quote the sing-song chant continued and i expected to come upon a group of singers at any moment as we rounded a bend in the road however i could no longer hear the music i signaled lassie and we continued our uninterrupted walk lassie and i turned to go home as we reached the last cabin on the road retracing our steps we started down the steep hill as soon as we reached the spot just before the final descent to the road we heard the singing again once again lassie stopped and turned her head towards the mountain to the west the music seemed to be coming from the top of the mountain situated behind some of the campsites and the only thing i could associate the style with was the gregorian chant end quote so first of all just reading about claire's experience and imagining myself in her position it gave me chills i found it to be creepy af and i probably would have just thrown myself down that hill and rolled all the way home screaming the entire way but wait there's more when clara got home from this walk she told her family about the music she'd heard up in the hills and her son mike laughed at her but her daughters were interested and the next night when clara ventured into the hills again at twilight she had company her daughters their three dogs and the neighbor girl pat clara laughed at herself as they started their climb sure that it had all just been her imagination or maybe the radio of some camper and they would see and hear nothing but when they reached that same spot the chanting could be heard again and clara looked at the young girls with her for confirmation that they heard it too they did hear it they all continued walking discussing what it could be the music fading away as they walked but just as it had the night before when they walked back down towards the house the music could be heard again but this time it was different i'll let clara tell you about it in her own words as we listened the singing stopped abruptly and after a pause of 30 seconds a single male voice began a monotone prayer if the singing was eerie the prayer was worse till my dying day i'll remember the look on pat's face she had her pigtails pulled up over her head i guess to hear better her face was as white as a sheet so that her freckles stood out in bold relief and her mouth was open in short she looked like i felt my skin was crawling needless to say we lost no time getting home now after mike heard what all the girls said when they returned home he decided he needed to go and check it out for himself and he asked his two friends bob and matt to come along matt who was skeptical about ghosts and spirits and the like said he would but bob refused telling his friends that those hills were haunted and he wasn't going anywhere near there as mike and matt climbed up the hill in the growing dark matt suddenly said he didn't want to keep going but mike convinced him to continue on that was until they heard the scream of a woman piercing through the spring air and ringing through the surrounding hills one single high-pitched scream that brought goosebumps to the arms of the boys who had previously been feeling so brave they hauled ass back home after mike and matt had heard that scream the family decided it would be best to not venture into the hills to hear the nightly concert anymore clara says that as the years went on she would hear from time to time other people refer to the sounds of mysterious singing coming from the hills and then most people assumed there was a church nearby but as far as clara could tell there was no church nearby clara dandy said the house felt as though it was sitting in the middle of a vacuum on certain nights a feeling that grew as the months passed a darkness would descend upon it and it would affect all the occupants inside when this happened the animals were restless the dogs would growl the cats would hiss and arch their backs the birds would fly madly around their cages and the humans were on edge too the kids were more sensitive and prone to crying fits petty arguments would break out easily and no one could really fall asleep quickly clara began calling these times umbrella nights saying in her book quote any other night i could walk down the road in pitch darkness with no quelms on these umbrella nights the very atmosphere made my flesh crawl end quote on one such night clara realized that one of their cats jinx had not come back to the house as darkness fell and since clara always liked to make sure that the animals were safe and sound inside before going to bed herself clara walked outside with a flashlight calling to jinx clara claims she felt something like an invisible force stop her in her tracks she could not move forward at all and said quote i had read about paranormal forces being able to force a person to a stop and frankly i thought it nonsense i found out how wrong i had been whether i was physically restrained or only mentally the effect was the same end quote clara turned around and ran back inside but once in the house she chided herself for being so foolish and she went back outside determined to get jinx and bring him in as she moved her flashlight across the yard she saw two eyes glowing back at her from a nearby crabapple tree clara triumphantly walked towards the eyes calling jinx's name softly but when she got to the spot where she'd seen the eyes there was no cat clara began to feel the fear clawing in her stomach again and she slowly backed away never taking her eyes off the spot where those two eyes had been glowing at her once she had backed away about eight feet the eyes reappeared but this had all gotten much too creepy for her and she knew there was no way she was going to walk back to that spot so she headed back inside still desperately calling jinx's name 30 minutes later with still no meow coming from jinx to be let in clara asked her daughter beth if she would accompany her outside to find their pet beth took control of the flashlight and together mother and daughter ventured back out into the darkness so i mean beth hadn't been out the two previous times right so she was feeling pretty brave she blazed ahead of her mother but suddenly she stopped dead at the same spot where clara had seen the eyes and she called back to her mother that they needed to get back inside something wasn't right as they ran back together towards the house they saw jinx dashing from the other side of the house to meet them now the cat had not run from the same location that clara had seen the glowing eyes but jinx was just as terrified to go running in that direction where the eyes had been jinxed clearly wanted to get inside into safety just as much as beth and clara wanted to now beth never revealed to clara what she had seen or felt that night that triggered her to feel unsafe or that triggered her to feel something wasn't right but a few years later she wrote to her mother from college and i'm gonna read a little bit of that letter to you now the first time i noticed something strange about the family or the house it was funny because it was before homecoming in my sophomore year i came home from a football game and you were doing the dishes and i walked over to the sink and it was like this wall of hostility you said you weren't mad but i felt something was wrong it was funny because i remembered how you always used to sing when doing the dishes mary was uptight that day too pat was there that weekend and she kept waking me up saying something was breathing down her neck two days after that was the first umbrella night i remember i don't know why i didn't remember before i guess maybe i never let myself i keep trying to shut everything out of my mind but it really doesn't work i guess someday i'll tell my kids and they'll laugh and suddenly it won't seem so horrible i think the horror started when i noticed you seldom sang anymore well now you can send the men in the white coats for me shortly after this umbrella night with jinx and the glowing eyes clara had to take beth to the doctor after she'd broken her arm in gym class mike stayed home with laura and mary and the three of them were sitting in the living room when the dogs began barking alerting them to a visitor on the property all three kids rushed to the front window to see who was there and that's when they noticed a young boy who appeared to be about 16 walking along the property line just about 20 feet away from them as they watched this boy turned and began walking towards the pond before vanishing before their eyes the kids were all stunned and they began questioning each other did you see that did you see him disappear the boy had vanished so quickly and suddenly mike was sure he had fallen into a hole or something so he ran outside to save this kid from the hole he had fallen into but upon further inspection of the area there was no hole not long after this two campers so they were like visitors who were staying in the campsite in the hills above the house they'd stopped during a drive to fill their water bottles at the dandy's outside faucet they saw this same young boy standing by the spring house later the wife called clara to let her know what had happened now this woman's name was grace and her husband was named dick they claimed that they thought the boy was a friend of the dandies but he seemed to be oblivious to his surroundings as he began walking in the direction of grace and dick's cabin moving through a field so they jumped into their car and they drove home arriving just a minute or two later and curious about where the boy was going and what he was doing grace went to the attic of their big red barn cabin which overlooked the field that this boy had walked into there was no sign of the boy who had just entered that field minutes before and had now completely vanished and even though grace and dick both saw a boy they described him differently dick said he was wearing jeans grace swore he was wearing chinos clara remarked on this disparity in her book saying quote this was the first time since the encounter with the black man that we realized the description of psychic phenomena often vary if seen at the same time end quote now we've talked a lot about clara and her children and i know it's probably confusing especially with the daughters because mike's the only son but then there's beth laura and mary and it can get kind of confusing so i sort of wanted to to break it down for you at the time they moved into hinsdale house claire was 37 years old so my age her son mike was 17. beth was 16. laura was 12 and mary was 11. so mary was the youngest mike being the only son was the oldest and then beth and laura were in the middle but we haven't really seen phil dandy age 39 play a huge role yet that's because he wasn't ever really home a lot things with phil and clara had been steadily declining he'd spend a lot of nights in buffalo with his in-laws and only come home on certain weekends clara said it was as if he didn't even have a family and his absence became so commonplace that his own children grew accustomed to it and even came to prefer it because when he was around the tension was palpable with everything happening in their marriage and the strange occurrences at the house adding on to the stress clara didn't feel as if she could confide in her husband phil because she felt talking to him about a haunted house would be like talking to him about anything else it would end in an argument and she didn't have the time or mental capacity to argue with him any longer they had reached a critical level of communication breakdown and phil who had always enjoyed a drink or two was imbibing more frequently making the local bar his home away from home he would often not be where he said he was going to be and he was bringing home less money from work and whenever clara questioned him on why this was he had no real answer so the marriage suffered from a growing lack of trust as well now clara did end up bringing her concerns to her husband and to her surprise he didn't laugh it off or discount her feelings he wasn't home often so he wasn't seeing and feeling everything that the others were but even during the short periods he was home he could also sense something was not right and there was some sort of dark force present that made him incredibly uncomfortable all of these things that had been happening people who would vanish animals dying and disappearing money going missing strange chanting coming from the hills the umbrella nights that would begin to steadily become the norm and not the exception unidentified flying objects all of these things came to a head in june of 1973 and if you thought that the stuff we already talked about was creepy scary or unsettling the events that would start that summer are bone chilling it was friday june 29th 1973. clara was alone in the house for the first time in a long time phil had taken laura to an eye doctor in olean and the rest of the kids had gone along for the ride clara herself had a doctor's appointment that afternoon but with some time to kill she settled onto the living room couch with a book to enjoy the rare and blissful silence she'd only been reading for a few minutes when she heard what sounded like a big pile of papers falling sort of the you know that sound when papers are falling she assumed it had been the stack of newspapers she placed on the front porch earlier that day so she went to pick them up but they were still where she had left them she did a quick stroll around the house to see if something else had fallen but everything was in its place so she returned to her book as soon as she sat down the window directly in front of her only 10 feet away slammed shout without warning or at least it sounded like it had slammed shut because when clara looked up she found that it was still open and no other windows in the house had closed either thoroughly spooked clara abandoned her fantasy of a quiet afternoon and left for the doctors early the following monday which was july 2nd phil went to work and clara stayed home with beth and mike the other two kids had decided to spend the weekend in buffalo with their grandparents clara's mother and father that night clara beth and mike all went to bed around 11 p.m but clara was woken up at 3 30 a.m by a shrill scream coming from downstairs both mike and beth slept in separate bedrooms on the first floor so clara ran downstairs to check on them only to find beth laying on her back in bed with her hands pressed to her eyes shaking in fear beth told her mother that she'd gotten up to get a drink of water and when she'd gotten back into bed something had jumped on her stomach something that beth thought was furry and in the dark resembled a cat but when this thing went for beth's face and she knocked it away with her arm she'd expected to hear a thud when it hit the floor or the wall but she heard nothing as if it had just vanished after her arm made contact with it now both the family cats had been upstairs with clara when this had happened they slept in bed with her and the next morning they found a substance outside of beth's door it was grayish green and slimy but had no odor as clara cleaned it up she remembered a time when she'd seen such a substance before it had been the previous april and beth had woken up screaming thinking something had been in her room the morning after the same slimy substance which they had then thought was animal excrement had been outside of beth's door on the morning of wednesday july 4th clara walked by mary's room on her way to make breakfast when she noticed the bedside lamp was shattered on the floor as she was cleaning this lamp up clara saw a playing card on the floor by the broken lamp pieces it was the ace of spades so clara put it on her own bedside table so they could find the deck of cards it belonged to and replace it the next morning the playing card that had been securely tucked under claire's alarm clock had vanished and later that morning she found it on the dresser in mary's room clara was beside herself and she expressed her concern to her husband phil who told her that she must have just moved the card and forgotten about it this same morning beth woke up with a mysterious burn on her leg she mentioned it at breakfast and her brother mike's face turned white before he admitted that he too had woken up on a morning last week with a burn but he hadn't said anything because it hadn't hurt and it was gone within a few days mary's burn did hurt and she ended up developing a scar from it now before mike had been speculative of what his mothers and sisters had been experiencing at hinsdale house but then whatever was in the house seemed to start targeting him one night at about 4am clara was woken up by mike calling for her asking her to come downstairs now clara writes in her book quote there is a wide long shelf over his bed on it he keeps books games magazines and what have you like any mother i had warned him time and again about the precarious pile of slick magazines perched on top of his games but the magazines didn't fall his chess set which was at the bottom of a very large pile fell on his chest and woke him up sleepily pushing it to the floor he turned over to go back to sleep about five minutes later his battleship game which had been on top of the chess set fell that's when he called me the magazines were still piled on the shelf still precarious but unmoved while the games beneath them lay all over the floor since mike prides himself on being logical and this was completely illogical he was absolutely convinced that something strange was happening in the house he kept shouting but they fell on me all beth and i said was join the club end quote the three of them after this decided to just try and have a normal day maybe allowing themselves to get worked up and anxious about whatever was happening was feeding the house in some way so they sat on the couch and they ate potato chips and they watched movies and they were having a good time talking and laughing when all of a sudden mike pointed to a row of pictures on the living room wall these were family pictures you know school pictures the kids first communions things like that but there was something wrong about one of mary's pictures mike saw something sticking out of the picture so he walked up and he cried out it was a plastic letter opener that clara had gotten from a previous job and he was protruding from mary's picture mike grabbed it out and snapped it into pieces and beth began crying asking her mother and brother why is it picking on mary she isn't even here all three of them slept in clara's room that night but although they felt safer together the house still rolled around them rife with supernatural energy clara wrote in her book quote i wish there was some way i could convey the horror i felt as i lay in bed with my own kids surrounded by my own pets and listened to the sounds of heavy men's footsteps downstairs walking from one end of the house to the other all night whoever it was or whatever was wearing hard-soled boots at least that's what they sounded like i found myself wishing he'd take them off mike kept saying mom can you hear that aren't you scared and i remember saying as long as they don't start up the stairs mike don't pay attention end quote apparently clara's mother had a cousin who was a priest his name was father bob and on friday july 7th clara called her mother to see if her mother could call father bob and have him come over and bless the hinsdale house clara's other daughters mary and laura had been staying with their grandparents in buffalo for a while actually at this point they were supposed to have stayed for the weekend and then they ended up staying for a week and then they elected to stay a bit longer after that not wanting to return to hinsdale house just yet father bob promised to come on july 10th for a cookout and a good old-fashioned house blessing and he did he came on july 10th they had dinner they talked about what's going on he walked around said a prayer bless the house and before he left he told clara i don't know if i did you any good but i didn't do you any harm can you imagine like you're living in this haunted house your money's going missing your pets are disappearing there's like creepy chanting coming from the hills above your house and then a priest comes over and does a blessing and he leaves and he says i don't know if i helped but i definitely didn't not help and that was debatable as the incidents picked up their tempo after this blessing was done the footsteps walking around the house at night were constant in mary's room she would often hear knocking while she was trying to sleep the family would sometimes be woken up in the middle of the night by a bone-penetrating cold in the middle of the summer one morning they woke up to the screen door on the porch in shreds having been clawed by something in the dark they would hear things being dragged around at night and this wasn't just the dandy family who experienced this phenomena it was the friends of the dandy children the friends of the kids who would often spend the night and they would get very little sleep in the process at the end of july mary and susan had been swimming in the pond when they'd seen a woman dancing on the bank of the pond you know on the on the land they described her differently once again one girl said she had teeth like a rabbit while the other said she had long pointed teeth but both girls agreed she had been spinning and dancing before suddenly disappearing into the tall grass beth had a doll about the size of a two-year-old and this doll had begun to frighten her so she and her sisters hung it from a tree but they all swore that the doll was looking at them threateningly from the tree so they cut it down and they kind of put it in a closet and you know out of sight out of mind before giving it away to another family who had a young daughter now the first night this doll was in its new home the family claimed their beds began to rock all over the room so they pretty much threw the doll out they didn't want to have anything to do with this doll i'm not sure why the dandies would be like let's gift this doll to to somebody because that's kind of mean but and i mean clara had told them like you know the girls are scared they think this doll's haunted i think they're crazy so at least this doll's gonna get some like use out of it because it was supposed to be a big doll this was a life-sized doll you know they were expensive back in the day it would have stood at about three feet you know probably the size of like a toddler and so clara wanted somebody to get use out of it she told the family that the kids thought it was haunted but she didn't believe it but then their beds began to rock all over the room so the family threw the doll out and they probably didn't want to be friends with the dandies after that clara's health also began to decline she was losing weight rapidly and she lived in what she called a constant cloud of apathy she wrote in her journal quote sometimes i think the house is absorbing me i can't seem to explain it to anybody but beth it frightens me to be always on the verge of tears always exhausted always drained end quote that is when the dandy family began to feel they might need a force more powerful to save them from the daily and nightly torture of hinsdale house so they called in an exorcist that is where we're going to end part one now i'm going to turn off the camera get some more coffee and sit back down and record part two right now so that will be up shortly after it's obviously going to take some time to edit but i'm going to try to edit both of these before i even post one of them so that it is ready for you and you guys don't have to wait a long time because i know if it was me i would not want to wait for part two at all if part two is already up you will find it in the description box so you can link right there from here make sure you like this video if you thought it was worth liking make sure you share it if you think it's worth sharing make sure you comment and let me know what you think about the video are you scared do you not believe in this stuff do you believe in the stuff so you're more scared are you just not scared of ghosts even though you might believe in them what do you think about all of this that we talked about i'm sure it's going to be a pretty long video so there's going to be plenty to discuss in the comments and i love seeing you guys in there also don't forget to check the description box to get 15 off your raycon purchase thank you so much to all of you out there who keep coming back watching my videos and sharing halloween with me thank you so much to my patrons who always there who always have my back and who give me such great feedback on my videos don't forget to check out the link in the description the bonfire link which will lead you to our our channel's merch along with the new halloween design that says don't hex me as well as older halloween designs they may be oldies but they are still goodies and i will see you very soon stay kind stay beautiful and stay spooky bye is [Music] how deep it goes until it's getting you slowly so you got to let it go

Channel: Stephanie Harlowe

Views: 362,945

Rating: 4.945467 out of 5

Keywords: harloween, stephanie harlowe, hinsdale house, clara dandy, the dandy family, father alphonsus trabold, haunted new york, haunted house

Id: RTStm36v6dY

Length: 60min 10sec (3610 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020