Tag: Evansville Indiana
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The Odon Fire Poltergeist
For this episode, we head up to Daviess County, Indiana, to look into a case from 1940 that the Indiana State Fire Marshal called "the most baffling mystery he had ever seen" before officially closing it as unsolved. People in the area still call it the Odon Fire Poltergeist.
Before we even get to the day the fires started, you have to talk about the history of this piece of ground because it makes you wonder if the place was cursed long before 1940. Back in the mid-1800s, a man named Marshall Ketchum built a house there. In the 1880s, five members of his family died on the property from what was called burning fever, which was likely typhus. Later on, the home was sold to a spiritualist named Andrew Wickle. Tragic bad luck struck again when Wickle’s son was killed in a hunting accident. Devastated by grief, Wickle had his son buried right in the yard in a custom casket with a glass window so he could look down at his face, and he claimed he regularly talked to his deceased son's spirit.
By 1940, a man named William Hackler lived on the farm with his wife Minnie and their five kids. Everything was uneventful until Friday, June 21, 1940.
That morning, wallpaper in an upstairs room suddenly burst into flames. The fire department rushed out, assuming it was a bad chimney. But when they tore down the plaster, there was no chimney anywhere near that wall, no electrical wiring, and no stove fire burning. From 9:00 AM until 11:00 PM that night, 28 separate spontaneous fires broke out all over the house.
The fires were completely unexplainable. Papers inside a closed desk drawer caught fire. Curtains ignited right behind visiting neighbors, but the window shades underneath them were untouched. A calendar burned up on the wall without even scorching the wallpaper behind it. Paper between a bed spring and mattress burst into flames and destroyed the bed. The family was so terrified they slept out in the front yard that night.
The State Fire Marshal investigated thoroughly, but they never found a single trace of arson, chemical reaction, or electrical fault. The story went nationwide and was even featured in a Collier’s Magazine ad for Travelers Insurance in 1941.
I actually got the chance to talk with 90-year-old Daviess County historian, Don Cosby, for this episode. He shared that the Hackler family left the county not long after the fires, and no trace of the family remained in the area. With help from Don's son-in-law, I managed to get the exact location of the old farm and took a drive up there. The old house is long gone now, and the site is just open farmland today.
Was it a genuine poltergeist, a bizarre natural phenomenon, or something else entirely? Listen to the episode and judge for yourself! -
Cryptid, High Strangeness, Unexplained
Garvin Lake Creature
This one is a little different because it is a personal story that happened in Evansville, Indiana, on Saturday, August 21, 2021.
My wife and I had headed over to Bosse Field around 7:00 PM to catch an Evansville Otters game. Our daughter performs with the dance team, so we always go out to support her. But full disclosure, neither of us are big baseball fans. Since the game was delayed by rain, we decided to walk around Garvin Lake to stretch our legs and pass the time before the fourth-inning dance.
It was a nice 75-degree evening, and the park was almost completely empty. As we were walking along the northwest corner of the lake path, something caught my eye about 200 feet out in the water.
At first, it looked almost like two green ducks floating parallel to the sidewalk. But the more we stared at it, the stranger it got. It didn't look like an animal, but it didn't look like a normal tree branch either. It looked like a clump of leaves or a leafy bush floating on the surface, moving deliberately through the water and leaving distinct ripples behind it.
I stopped walking to make sure my eyes weren't just playing tricks on me while we moved. Sure enough, this thing was actively moving across the lake.
Just as I turned my head to grab my phone and try to get a photo, Sherry gasped. Whatever it was had just dove straight under the surface, creating a massive splash and wake like someone dropped a huge rock into the water.
We figured if it was something air-breathing, it had to pop back up eventually. We stood there watching the water for about ten minutes, and then walked around to the other side of the lake to keep an eye on the spot. It never came back up. It just vanished under the water and stayed down.
I am definitely not claiming we saw some kind of legendary lake monster or cryptid living in Garvin Lake. My best practical guess is maybe a huge catfish got snagged on some discarded fishing line that was wrapped around a tree branch, dragging the branch along the surface until it pulled it back under. But honestly, who knows?
Have you ever seen anything bizarre out at Garvin Lake, or do you have a theory on what we saw? Give the episode a listen and let me know.