Tag: fire
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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!