Being an unmarried woman in her thirties at that time would have branded her an old maid to most people, but like Laughlin she had her own strange allure and was even elected Most Excellent Chief of the Pythian Sisters of Indianapolis, a secret society. Shortly after being discharged, he met and married a woman a decade his senior. Upon graduating in May of 1944, he enlisted in the army, and by December he was overseas. Just the same, like so many people forged by tragedy, he grew into a gregarious young man, described by his high school classmates as “our funny man, known by everyone.” His senior yearbook photo shows a pale, plump face with a smile fighting back laughter.
His father, a salesman, was forced to send Laughlin to live with an aunt. When he was three, the economy tumbled into the Great Depression, then at five his mother died after a mastectomy failed to rid her of cancer. He was also one of only eighteen qualified hypnotists in the Pittsburgh area.īorn to older parents, his nearest sibling was twelve years Laughlin’s senior. A doctor, yes, but a doctor of chiropractic medicine, a discipline founded only a few decades before on the idea that all diseases stemmed from an interruption in the flow of divine presence. His previous home was tidy and nestled in a row of prim houses with broad front lawns in Bethel Park, a fashionable suburb of Pittsburgh.īut under the respectable veneer, there had always been something different about Laughlin. No one could have looked more out of place in a rundown house with a leaky roof and busted windows. A man with round proportions and well-groomed facial hair that brought an Old World colonel to mind, he had a conspiratorial smile that tended to pull people into an easy confidence. A shaded porch competed with the wild vines snaking around its front columns.Īt first glance, Dr.
SEANCE CANDLES SECRET CLUB WINDOWS
A trio of high windows glared down beyond the grounds at the road, the railroad tracks, the river. A shallow angled roof crowned the second story, supporting a tall, white cupola. It stood atop a slope overlooking the road at the base of a hill that faded into looming pines and old maple trees. The family did not stay long, even though the sprawling estate cost less per month than most of the compact ranch houses that peppered the rest of the town on quarter acre lots. In the two decades since an out of town investor had purchased the dilapidated mansion, the agency had only managed to rent it out to a single family. In less than a decade, nearly fifteen percent of the town’s population had left. In its industrial heyday, the town had been called “Little Pittsburgh.” Not anymore. Three years earlier, in the summer of 1967, the Sonntag Real Estate Agency got a nibble on a property they worried they might never unload, 1161 North Liberty Street on the western edge of New Castle. The house, saturated with thousands of gallons of water, had burst into flames again. The fire had brought to a close the brief and strange history of the first haunted house in America open to the public, but it wasn’t done yet.įorty-five minutes later, the firefighters’ radios shrieked to life for the second time that morning. The last firefighters left the scene before the sun rose, concluding the sort of dull and exhausting battle referred to in the fire service as a surround-and-drown. There were no victims to save or survivors to comfort in the home, which had been abandoned four months earlier. It was as if some grand, invisible force were silently willing the fire to finish its work.īy the time Stoner radioed for additional units and manpower from West Pittsburg, five miles south, an uphill battle had become a lost cause.
Intense heat shot from the rambling brick mansion with a low, crackling gasp.Īs the first trucks arrived on scene and underequipped volunteers laid hose and began dousing the blaze, the water pressure inexplicably dropped. Following the curve of the Shenango River, he watched the blaze transform the black sky into a swelling neon bruise as he swerved south onto Atlantic Avenue. Just after 2:20 on the morning of Friday, October 9th, 1970, the thirty or so members of the New Castle, Pennsylvania, volunteer fire department woke to the sound of squealing radios.įire Chief Jack Stoner bypassed the station, which was out of his way, and tore off for the scene, only two-and-a-half miles from his home. When a down-and-out doctor finds his rundown mansion is haunted, he pulls the quintessentially American move: opening the house to the public for a fee.
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